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Comment by gms7777 | Hacker News Reader

I remember reading an article at one point about a study done on high school students. I can't remember exact details, but there was a program where students in areas with bad high schools could apply to be sent to better high schools. If I remember correctly, admission to the program wasn't merit based, but first-come, first-serve. The study compared the students who got into the program, and the students who applied but didn't get it. The kicker? Their performance in school (I don't remember the metrics, though I agree its a relevant difference whether its GPA or standardized test scores or something else) was about the same.

The takeaway point? The ones applying were the ones who were motivated to learn (or had family who encouraged them to take education more seriously). Those that want to learn, will learn.

Not to be discouraging, (as I read this article and found it incredibly inspiring), but the students in these classes are the exceptionally motivated, who stuck through this education despite the difficulties. The hurdle that must be overcome for this to have widespread implication is how we get more people to find that motivation.

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This is part of Freakonomics (http://www.amazon.com/Freakonomics-Economist-Explores-Hidden...). Though you could have obviously seen it elsewhere.

In the book, it was referring to lottery based admission to the better schools. The result was that it didn't matter whether the students won the lottery or not. They performed equally well (on whatever generic criteria you use to judge academic performance in hs, most likely state standardized tests). The point being that students who cared enough to want to be in the better school would do well no matter where they were.

Do we know that virtuous intent is what separates those who apply versus those who don't?

That might just be measuring the stability, resources, and values of the family. I can easily see how a kid with a supportive family can do well, even under challenging circumstances.

But is that fair to the kid who was born into a more chaotic environment?

Or, a family where the parents make a rational choice not to send their kid to this school? Perhaps they can't afford increased activity fees. Or perhaps they worry about their kid being a fish out of water, competing with kids from more privileged backgrounds?

Or, a family where the parents are actively anti-learning -- either through internalized racism or sexism[1], fear of their kids becoming alien to them, or a belief that the rest of society is so racist that education isn't helpful?

[1] A friend of mine from rural Quebec was dissuaded by her mother from getting a college degree, because, quote, "we're not made for great things".

That may very well have been where I saw it. Thank you.

Maybe, but the lucky ones who get into the good schools because their parents can donate a building or two, will also do well no matter how lazy or stupid they are, so life's still unfair.

It's possible to go to an excellent school and fail to learn anything if you don't want to, especially if you have been culturally conditioned to hate school.

At least a good school does provide the opportunity, from stories I've heard from people who have worked at or attended bad schools it would be an environment where it would be basically impossible to learn anything even if you wanted to.

OK, this is just one anecdote, but...

I grew up in a fairly rural, poor part of North Carolina, went to generic, poor to below average public schools, came from a dirt-poor family that most people would describe as "white trash" or "redneck" or whatever... my father dropped out of school in 8th grade, and my mom finished H.S. but never college.

But, despite not going to a "good school," or growing up in a household full of academics, or living in an affluent neighborhood or anything, I always managed to keep learning, and things turned out fairly well for me (to date). I went to college, gaining (over the years) 3 A.S degrees, and not quite bothering to finish my B.S. I've worked professionally as a software developer for the past 12 years, and have broken the 6 figure / year salary margin (while still living in NC, mind you).

When I look back at my own travails, I agree with the sentiment that "people who want to learn, will." If the classes I was in were boring as %!#^ (and they were) I went to the library and checked out books. Even my poor ass rural public school managed to have a library, and there was the local public library. And even though my family was poor, we went to things like the once per year "library book sale" at the main public library branch, and bought books for $0.25 / each... I'd go and bring back boxes of books on science, math, electronics, software, etc. And I read, and I hacked on shit in my spare time, and read more, and pursued the stuff that interested me. Honestly, I'd say my school (I'm talking elementary school through high-school here, not college) had little to nothing to do with what I learned, and my outcome in life.

Again, just one anecdote, and admittedly a personal and biased one from one limited perspective... but I don't put much stock in the idea that it's "impossible to learn anything" pretty much regardless of what school you attend.

I guess it's one reason I get annoyed when people talk about "Horatio Alger stories" as though they were a myth, or believing in them was some kind of logical fallacy. I %!#^ng lived that story, so I know first-hand that it's possible to ascend from poverty to a decent lifestyle through a lot of hard work and determination.

I'm curious what your parents taught you about personal responsibility. My theory is it's less about whether you grow up in poverty as it is about growing up being taught you're a victim, that everything bad in your life is the result of other people hating you or taking what should be yours, etc. If you feel everything that you have or don't have is the result of things other people are giving you or taking from you, you learn that you are not in control of your destiny.

However the reality is that almost nobody in the world or evn your town even knows you exist, much less is actively working to keep you down. If you grow up being told that life is (largely) what you make it, you will tend to do what it takes to achieve what you want, rather than remaining mired in self-pity and victimhood.

My story is similar to mindcrimes. I don't remember my parents ever blaming anyone else or being victims. My moms lessons were fairly simple. Work hard, don't get a girl pregnant, and go to college.

My dad was a quiet guy who just worked hard. If I complained about something not being fair he didn't care. "Life isn't fair. Now what are you going to do?" I can still clearly remember him and my mom fighting over food stamps. We qualified, and my mom wanted to get them but he refused. Instead he got another side job.

The other thing he always did was put outcomes squarely on me. It didn't matter if it really was another persons fault, he always asked what could I have done differently to change the situation.

I'll quit rambling now, but let me say y level of perfectionism and work ethic clearly came from my dad. It's probably not always healthy, but it has worked out pretty well so far :)

Oh yeah... that. My parents absolutely hammered a sense of personal responsibility into me, and a "you control your own destiny" sentiment. My dad also instilled a sense of work ethic through demonstration (although, if you'd asked him when I was 14, he probably would have disagreed!). The thing is, we were poor, but my dad always worked and worked hard... and he was an entrepreneur, even a serial entrepreneur even though I doubt he knew that word. In between stints of working on dredge boats and doing auto-mechanic work, etc., my dad started business after business: building and selling crab traps, bought a dump trunk and did "hauling fill dirt," then "building docks and bulkheads" and then it was cutting down trees and hauling pulpwood to the mills, etc., etc. He finally "made it" so to speak, doing a business pouring and finishing cement (foundations, slabs, etc.)

So in that regard, I had a strong sense of personal responsibility (I think my parents essentially were libertarians, even though they had probably never heard that word either) and a demonstration of work ethic and the entrepreneurial drive.

> However the reality is that almost nobody in the world or evn your town even knows you exist, much less is actively working to keep you down. If you grow up being told that life is (largely) what you make it, you will tend to do what it takes to achieve what you want, rather than remaining mired in self-pity and victimhood.

"The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death — however mutable man may be able to make them — our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light."

Stanley Kubrick

That's very inspiring, but the reality is that many people are victims, and there are many who try to keep you down even if they don't know you exist. Society has a power structure, and those in power try to stay just where they are. One of the things working in their favor is that you, apparently, don't know who they are.

The bottom line is that you can do a lot to better your fortune, and there might be some quite powerful forces working against you. So your life outcome is a combination of your effort, social circumstances and a lot of sheer luck.

Being a victim is a state of mind, not something that happens to you.

Nope, it's usually something done to you.

Whether or not victims could overcome their actual victimhood through some intense effort on their part is a different question.

So, was Genghis Khan a victim or an oppressor?

Try reframing from an oppressor-victim category matrix to simply co-competitors because that is evolution's perspective.

Moreover, the oppressor-victim matrix provides competitive benefits to its promoters because it induces complacency in those who adopt it as correct.

Society's power structure doesn't matter. If it did, pivots wouldn't work - ever.

Stop reading so much Occupy BS.

Thats simplifying the matter down to a single key axis. Which is always an issue when dealing with the human condition.

You will be right within a certain subset of human lives, but for others - say a favela dweller in a Rio slum, or a taxi driver in dharavi - both of whom are motivated, willing to learn and doing everything they can to get ahead, their outcomes can be vastly different.

Heck I don't know if this has been covered on HN yet, but a few months ago 2 MBA grads decided to see if they could live on the poverty line decided by the Indian govt. Something like rs 28 a day - a about than $0.5 today.

They even went below the poverty line, at which point just being able to afford transport was impossible because they had to scrounge to maintain basic calorific intake. If they had to go beyond a certain KM radius, it was impossible because of the constraints they faced.

And these were guys who had to cut down their food intake, and when they did shower, they did so by cutting their soap in half iirc.

Their final comment was that if they had fallen sick during their below poverty line experiment, they would have had it because they would have had no recourse whatsoever.

Ah found the link - http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/living-like-the-ot...

http://www.timescrest.com/society/the-buck-swaps-here-6532

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15542957

Actually, they have a great website of their own with a lot of data which probably deserves a post of its own on HN, now that I've seen it.

The argument has never been that it is impossible to rise from poverty. The argument is that it is demonstrably massively unlikely.

The argument has never been that it is impossible to rise from poverty. The argument is that it is demonstrably massively unlikely.

So the question then, as I see it, is "how do we make it more likely?" I mean, if I can overcome all sorts of obstacles that are frequently cited as reasons people remain in poverty, and I am not anybody particularly special, then why shouldn't anybody else be able to? What separates a kid like me from my elementary school class-mates who are still living in poverty? And that's not exactly a rhetorical question, but it's one that I honestly don't know the answer to. The only obvious thing I can come up with is some degree of intrinsic motivation, some drive or pull that I felt, that compelled me to make the sacrifices to improve my life. But even if that were true, I'm not sure how you'd explain that.

"intrinsic motivation"

Well, I came from a fairly modest background in rural Scotland (mind you, not what anyone would call "poor") and one thing that has always been very obvious to me is that my motivation was not intrinsic - my parents, siblings (all of who have done pretty well), teachers and school friends were very positive and encouraging.

Looking back on it I find it remarkable at how positive my school friends were towards me having an obvious route out of the community through academic success - they had hard lives of working in deep-sea fishing, offshore oil or farming to look forward to. I never encountered any resentment or bitterness - people seemed genuinely pleased that I was going to go to university.

However, it was relatively late in life (30s) that I actually realised that this kind of supportive background is not the norm and many people, especially from modest backgrounds, face actual hostility and discouragement from when they try to "get out of their box". As my wife, who although she is now a succesful lawyer, came from a background where academic success was not encouraged has commented to me - success was easy for me because it was expected of me from an early age.

Sadly, for many people nobody expects them to succeed and so therefore they don't. For me this is one of the real tragedies of our society.

Based on your story it seems you were lucky enough to have a stable family who gave you what support they could to pursue independent study/tinkering outside of school.

I am in the UK so it may be somewhat different here but I certainly know people with similar stories to yours over here.

However there are plenty of families over here who live in poverty where either both parents are unemployed , or dad is a drug dealer and mum is a prostitute. In many of these cases the children are simply not encouraged to learn anything, never provided with books (the parents might not even be able to read themselves).

There is often a bias in these communities against anybody who is seen to be working hard to learn anything educational and this is carried into school.

Based on your story it seems you were lucky enough to have a stable family who gave you what support they could to pursue independent study/tinkering outside of school.

Semi-stable might be a better term. My parents divorced when I was 16, and through most of my childhood my dad wasn't around through big chunks of it, because a lot of the jobs he took (in between attempts at entrepreneurial initiatives) involved working "on the road" a lot (mainly dredge-boats). But yeah, we were poor, but mostly not so poor that we couldn't afford food (although we had stints on foodstamps and what not, to be honest), and we did have enough money at times, that yeah, I managed to accumulate a decent little home library through yard-sales, library book sales, etc., and I had a little toolset, a soldering iron, and the ocassional trip to Radio Shack to acquire components (along with whatever components I could scavenge from old discarded TVs acquired from around the neighborhood, etc).

However there are plenty of families over here who live in poverty where either both parents are unemployed , or dad is a drug dealer and mum is a prostitute.

Yeah, thankfully my own situation wasn't quite that bad.

In many of these cases the children are simply not encouraged to learn anything, never provided with books (the parents might not even be able to read themselves).

Luckily for me, my mom was (and is) an avid reader and she read to me a lot as a kid, so I could already read when I started kindergarten, and I was always reading books from a few grade levels ahead of my grade. I remember once, in elementary school, trying to check out a book that was reserved for a grade higher than my own grade, and they wouldn't let me, and I raised such a fuss that my mom eventually came down to the school, talked to the school officials and got me permission to check out higher grade books. So yeah, in that regard, I had some positive things on my side.

"how do we make it more likely?"

Sometimes it's not just a matter of being intrinsically motivated, and no matter what you sacrifice, you never seem to have enough.

"Many young people, who have the ability to attend post secondary institutions, will not get that opportunity because of limited family financial resources." - http://rotarycs.org/local.aspx

This is my anecdotal story. Not only did I fit into that category, I was also not initially intrinsically motivated. But the good people at the Rotary Club accessed my high risk of dropping out and gave me a "Stay in School" scholarship.

Having people believe in me and put $5000 on it - well, I can't say enough good things about them. I believe I would have given up on school in grade 7 (and I still missed a large chunk of it (long story)), but instead here I am with a BSc in Computer Science with "Great Distinction" instead. I imagine I would still be a min-wage Courtesy Clerk at the local IGA if I hadn't been given this opportunity.

Part of the trouble is that only 3 of these scholarships were given out when there were plenty of other kids who could have used them too. Not necessarily hand outs, but a hand up. These scholarships come with mentoring and support to develop motivation in the student to not only stay in school, but to do well at it.

It's not that I think they owe me a scholarship and mentoring, but just that it's not really my fault I was born in to a situation where I would have otherwise had virtually no idea and no means of escaping. I suppose maybe I could have tried worked for it all by myself and for myself (and I did pay for the rest of my schooling myself), but I can't imagine how I would have known to without intervention and I'm not sure I wouldn't have worked myself to death before getting anywhere.

I wish I had more profound and coherent things to say about this, but it's a subject that is pretty close to home and I could start rambling pretty quick.

> So the question then, as I see it, is "how do we make it more likely?"

We'd have to change the structure of society. Its a class structure, and there's only so much room at the top. The wealth of the upper class comes from extracting rents from the lower class. This happens on a global scale (core countries exploiting the periphery) as well as a local scale (landlords with good credit collect more in rent than they pay on the mortgage).

Wrong.

If this were true, then when the colonists from "core" countries left a colonized area, then that area should have seen an increase in wealth because those rent monies would have remained in the colony. The history of numerous areas, such as Haiti, Kinshasa, and Zimbabwe say that this did not happen.

The wealth of the upper class comes from courage, determination, intelligence, organization, and productive use of time.

Furthermore, following your rule, Mark Zuckerberg, who is formerly a long time renter, should be less rich than his former landlords.

Actually, in most cases, former colonists immediately stuck the decolonized nation with massive debts conjured up for the "theft" of the national assets. That's why Haiti is still poor: they've been in debt to France for the "theft" of "French" assets in colonial Haiti ever since their revolution.

Sorry for the late rebuttal...

Actually, according to Wikipedia, Haiti paid off their debt to France that resulted from the Haitian Revolution in 1883: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_debt_of_Haiti.

Free of their French "landlords" the Haitian "renters" should have seen increasing prosperity since they were sitting on one of the most agriculturally productive (in terms of sale price for crops grown, not total amount of all products grown) regions of the New World. So, what went wrong?

So, the core(rich) countries include South Korea, Japan, Western Europe, and the United States. What exactly is the periphery? I don't think that there exists the geographic bias you imply.

fwiw, the terminology comes from Immanual Wallerstein.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World-systems_theory#Periphery_...

Take a look at Harlem Children's Zone for one model that seems to be helping break the cycle for some. If that can be grown/cloned a couple of orders of magnitude, there may be hope for the country.

Rural schools can have one advantage - everyone goes to them. In big cities, schools are a lot more stratified - no-one goes to a poor (black / latino) school unless they are poor.

You could look at the richer kids, do what they did (read books, learn stuff), and succeed. In a ghetto school, the only rich kids are drug dealers.

And how did your peers do?

On average?

Good question. I'm not sure I've kept in touch with enough of them to truly answer that (and keep in mind, I'm almost 39, so it's been quite a few years since I've seen or talked to the majority of these people). But, I know at least one or two of my classmates did go on to become medical doctors, while more than a few are working various blue collar, manual labor jobs back home in rural NC. To quantify what the "average" outcome for those folks is, would be pretty tough to do.

You have done extremely well, but you're forgetting that most successful rich people, those born to the right parents and in the right neighborhoods, are boring as %!#&, and many of them are not only unmotivated to learn, but quite stupid as well. So it's only the poor who have to really want it. The rich are simply born with it. So economic success is still very much hereditary (though you don't inherit it with your genes).

That's a magnificent job of stereotyping you've got going there. I can think of lots of "rich people" who have done quite well; Bill Gates springs to mind.

I'd love to see some evidence showing that middle class folks aren't financially mobile.

I mean seriously? Rich people (oh you qualified it with a "most") are stupid, unmotivated, and boring. I should know not to feed the trolls, but on HN, I can't let this type of stuff slide.

I said most of them are boring and many are stupid. Just like poor people; just like average people.

I was simply replying to the commenter who said that most poor people he grew up with were boring and didn't want to learn. He then made the implicit or even explicit claim that if only poor people were less boring or more eager to learn, more of them would succeed. While perhaps true (though there are forces at work that make it hard for them), this isn't required of rich people. They can do well while being boring, lazy and stupid.

I certainly don't think the rich are somehow more boring or more stupid than the poor.

I learned once that when you're in a hole, further digging does little to help you extricate yourself.

He's right, you know. I've failed to meet anyone more boring or glib than a set-for-life Harvard student.

Why is it, then, that despite the school someone goes to not mattering in outcomes once you control for external factors, rich people still disproportionately prefer to send their kids to private schools, and are willing to pay 20-30k per year over a decade to do so?

I could totally believe that it's totally irrational on the rich parents' part: kids and health are places where people lose much sense of rationality and perspective. But it's still worth considering that the people who are typically most invested and knowledgeable about their kids and the benefits of a good education do usually go for private school if they have the means to.

It's because it does matter to the outcome, if you consider the outcome to be more than just GPA. GPA is not the best indicator of whether it's a worthwhile investment. The selection of a private school takes in to account additional factors like the environment you learn in, the connections you make, the college prospects you get and also the mere existence of religion.

Could you expand on the "mere existence of religion?"

Private schools are often affiliated with religious groups (Catholic, Jewish, etc.) For many people who choose private education, the existence of religion classes in school is a large factor.

In the case of this particular study, it seemed that the quality of the school as a factor was overshadowed by the desire to learn, as shown by the attempt to get into a better school. This does not mean that the quality of the school does not matter, simply that desire to learn matters much more.

because a private school would not have confined my friend's child to special education because she spoke Spanish in class one day to a friend.

Perhaps rich people are getting the result they believe they are supposed to receive? As in, their behavior is modified in minor ways they do not perceive but all towards the goal of increasing the success of the children they enroll?

It really comes down to parents. Children are not autonomous for the early formative years and how the parents treat them, from setting their morals and encouraging good behavior sets the course for most of their life barring abrupt unforeseen external forces.

I have only one issue with private schools, I do not believe any politician should be allowed to send their children to one.

That is odd.. so politicians should have less freedoms than the citizens they serve? Good luck finding someone to elect. It is bad enough political organizations go dredging through their personal lives. It amazes me people are still willing to serve in public office.

I will give you the reason, I tire of them incessantly telling other people public schools are well and fine for other people's children but they find all sorts of reasons to prevent their children from attending.

So, they need to sleep in the bed they make. If they don't offer parents the choice of what schools to send their kids too on the basis that their schools are perfectly fine then why don't they stand behind their words and send their own kids there.

Yes I support vouchers, I think schools should have to compete for the money. The money needs to follow the student, not the school. In the nearly forty years we have had a Department of Education the only thing that has gone up is the cost per pupil, scores certainly have not.

Because going to a private school gives your children the opportunity to network with the children of other wealthy people.

Your kid can't be captain of the squash team if there is no squash team.

I did find the lowering of barriers that would impede access to education like providing free meals, free transportation, and access to free babysitting to have been really helpful. In a way, it's like lowering the activation energy required to get motivated students into an environment where they can flourish.

I feel that the desire for an education is intrinsic. If you want to learn, you will (as evidenced by the study gms was talking about). Simply having access to all those goodies won't lead to motivation. Unmotivated students in that cushy environment would just lead to them being happier and more content, not make them work harder.

Don't focus on what it doesn't do for the unmotivated. Focus instead on how it can improve the motivated. A smart, hardworking student who is hungry won't learn much. A smart, hardworking student who is exhausted after walking miles to school in winter on an empty stomach will learn even less.

In the mid-80's I went to an NYC public school that used to be one of the best and by the time I went there, it was... Well let's just say it was quite subpar. The school had an honors program where I spent almost all my time, and I didn't really think it was anything special, just OK. Never had to work hard to get A's. Then Senior year they realized I couldn't graduate without taking Music Appreciation(!) and the only way to do it on time was to take that class with the "regular" students.

Bedlam would have been calmer. It was simply impossible to learn anything in that class. There were students constantly screaming, throwing things, walking in and out of the room all the time, etc. Maybe 5 people out of 35 paid any attention to the teacher. Hell, once he realized I was one of the better behaved ones, he guaranteed me an A just for coming in and cleaning the blackboard every day and then sitting there quietly. I'm not an idiot; I did it and got my A.

I could go on, but suffice to say that one experience opened my eyes to the difference in classes in the same school. I shudder to think how some of the really bad schools were.

I understand that its easy and important to pour resources into educating the already motivated. The justification is clear, they want to be there, they want to learn, they "deserve it".

Yet, unless I'm misreading your comment, it appears as if a majority of students in the worse schools appear to be in the "unmotivated" class. Heck, even in my middle/upper-middle class suburban high school, that same divide between the "honors" and the "regular" kids was there.

I think the bigger societal issue is finding some way to get this majority interested in learning. That would have a far larger impact than giving more to the already motivated (if only due to sheer numbers). I realize this is a HUGE issue to tackle and unfortunately, its something that I have no answers for.

Neither do I. I think it starts with group psychology: even among the non-honors students I knew quite a few who were working as hard as they could and wanted to learn. But in the larger group, they are put down because they're not doing what everyone else is doing, so the first problem is how to break the cycle of groupthink and allow people to do their own thing.

One thing we (favorite teacher and me) observed (this with 30+ year-old memory) is that one or two students in the large student body being recognized academically motivated others to work hard to get the same recognition. I graduated before I could see how far this went, but it was showing promise.

If you have a desire to learn but no possibility of learning (no teachers, no materials etc.) then you won't be educated.

There is always something to learn.

At some point, a long, long time ago, people had to have made discoveries and learn from that without teachers or materials. The education we have come to take for granted didn't just appear out of thin air.

You might be reinventing the wheel, but it's still a great achievement. The lack of teachers and materials isn't going to stop anyone who wants to learn.

Really? because the article directly contradicts you. These people were totally capable of learning, and demonstrated a willingness to learn, but they were not educated.

How do you define education? Something as simple as learning how to interact with people is something that anyone in the presence of other people (which is most people on the planet) can do. Maybe you can't learn computer science in rural Africa, but that's not really what I'm talking about.

Again, the article contradicts this idea. As the course went on, aggressiveness and threats were used less often in arguments, and the debates became more civil. Interpersonal interaction was one of the skills that these people did not pick up in all their years "on the street", but learned in the class.

So you would say that aggressive and uncivil contact was not a learned behaviour?

If I was without teachers and materials and I discovered the square wheel, does the fact that people with teachers are aware of the round wheel discount everything I achieved? I think not. It is still amazing, even if others can do it better.

I guess I'm just not quite seeing where you are coming from. It's not a question of what kind of materials are available, it's the idea that learning is impossible without them. The fact that these people could carry on any kind of interaction, even if done poorly by our society's standards, speaks to me that learning does occur despite what is available.

> So you would say that aggressive and uncivil contact was not a learned behaviour?

I would say it is uneducated behavior. Yes, everyone learns naturally; that's what it is to exist. Education is eduction--the drawing out--not mere "learning".

But you only have so much energy and learning takes energy. I know from personal experience that the more stressed I am, the more time and energy I had to put in to getting enough calories this week the less I have to spend on learning. Being hungry or sleep deprived makes everything harder. It can be challenging just to summon the energy to make basic day-to-day decisions, much less reach out and learn new things. It's why free school breakfasts and lunches do such good things for educational outcomes.

The easier it is to learn the more people will be able to get over the hump. It won't ever be everyone, but it's basic behavioral economics: the easier it is to get the same payoff the more people will do it.

>Those that want to learn, will learn.

I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion. In fact, it seems like the study you mention supports the exact opposite. Those that wanted to learn (as evidenced by being first to apply) didn't show signs of being better able to learn given the same environment and resources. Wanting to learn isn't enough, but requires an environment in which to flourish.

The difference between "applied first" and "applied last" in motivation is probably dwarfed by the difference between "applied last" and "didn't apply".

If it was being used for a study, though, it was probably a lottery out of those who applied, not first-come, first-served.

Apologies if the wording wasn't clear in the original comment.

The students who applied for the program performed about the same, regardless of whether they went to the "good" schools or the "bad" ones.

I'm not arguing that an environment which promotes learning isn't better. I believe that having the resources and support probably motivates people to learn more. I was just saying that for the already motivated, it didn't make much of a difference.

Freakonomics story.

http://www.freakonomics.com/2007/10/04/more-evidence-on-the-...

I can't find the exact reference but I believe somewhere in the book they talk about the mere fact of entering your student into this lottery to go to a better school meant that the student would have better outcomes (regardless of whether they "won" the lottery or not).

The idea being that it was the mere "intent" of a parent wanting better for their child that had the most impact on student performance.

Yeah, there's a nice summary of some of these types of papers here:

http://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/2007/RAND_WR460.pdf (section 2.3).

Some people wish to extrapolate that lottery results proves that a (statistically) lower quality pupil going to a a good school is without benefit.

"The ones applying were the ones who were motivated to learn"

Wasn't it their parents that were applying? Doesn't that change the conclusion you drew?

My question to your takeaway point would be, if these people are so motivated that they do better in courses, why do they stay so poor? Either merit is being suppressed by social forces (most definitely), or merit isn't the only requisite thing for social ascent.

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