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Comment by Alien1Being | Hacker News Reader

Such a shame.

Schools for the poorer segments of society keep adding more and more technology, eroding the analytical skills of their students and staff. But the shiny things keep the poorer parents and mediocre teachers happy while keeping down cost per lesson per child. This keeps the administrators happy.

Meanwhile ultra-expensive elite private schools for the children of the Zuckerbergs, Al Sauds, Al Nahyans, where the teachers are Ivy and Oxbridge graduates emphasise tradition, classical studies and analytical skills while relegating technology to a minor role

As always the children of the rich and powerful get bespoke education... You could call it elegant education for a more civilized age...

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This was more than a decade ago when we were looking into emersion schools for our daughter. We went to several private schools first and all three were emphasizing ipads as their primary tool for teaching language. The public school our daughter was set to attend had an open house promoting its long running emersion programs.

Wow. Our public school had native speakers and no ipads. There was a major focus on true emersion. From minute one, they were spoken to in the native language. The teachers were incredible. In the first six months, my daughter was speaking in full sentences and her teachers were praising her pronunciation of certain words.

The real eye opener came at a local park. My daughter was playing with a boy, speaking to him and his mother. I came over to join the fun and the mother started speaking to me in Spanish. I was like, "Uh, I don't speak Spanish." She looked at me confused and said, "Your daughter, she was speaking fluently to both myself and my son in Spanish."

It was a pretty jaw dropping moment. One, to think we were blessed to have such a great emersion program at our public school and secondly to see my daughter pick up a language so effortlessly. It really reinforced my idea that its all about the quality of education, not necessarily how much you're paying for it.

This is incredible to hear! My gf has had similar stories about kids coming into her program with zero English, often with parents that have little to no English, and within a short amount of time becoming conversationally fluent and translating for their mom and dad.

It's pretty amazing.

I wonder if the word you’re looking for is “immersion” — to be immersed in something — rather than emerging from .. knowledgelessness?

Yessir, my autocorrect got it wrong and I missed it. Thank you for the catch.

> But the shiny things keep the poorer parents and mediocre teachers happy while keeping down cost per lesson per child.

Baltimore spends more per student than Switzerland.

> As always the children of the rich and powerful get bespoke education... You could call it elegant education for a more civilized age...

Education for more affluent people is often cheaper per student. The benefit richer students have is that, on average, their parents are smarter, more conscientious, etc.

Baltimore does not spend more per student than Institut Le Rosey, the school of kings... (alumni include the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, the du Ponts)

The fees are well over USD $150,000 a year.

Philips Exeter (Zuckerberg's school ) is a bargain by comparison at $80,000 s year .

These schools emphasis clear and analytical thinking and traditional education.

In contrast the unfortunate children of the poor are subjected to everyone technology and education trend of the moment...

Education in public schools has turned into AI slop being generated by poorly educated teachers.

The Rotchschilds, the Rockefellers, and the Du Ponts would have done very well in life just as well had they went to public schools, while the alumni of Baltimore public school would not become Rotschilds and Rockefellers and Zuckerbergs had they gone to Pillips Exeter.

That doesn’t mean their schools aren’t better. Money isn’t the only reason having a thoughtful, rigorous and well-constructed education is important.

Education is essential in general. But as far as the classic definition of "success" is concerned (usually revolving around wealth of some kind), education is like luck. It could make the difference between 2 people in otherwise identical situations and status. But education alone sadly has a vanishingly small chance of competing with "old money" and generations of accumulated wealth and influence.

You’re essentially just repeating the point I was responding to.

In many things with regards to education you're not paying/applying for a better quality system in and of itself, but for better quality peers. A public school with a e.g. Exeter quality class would have phenomenal results. By contrast an average public high school class at Exeter is going to have mediocre results. We even tested this. Around COVID many top universities rolled back their testing requirements for admittance under an equity based argument. Those universities are now mostly rolling back those decisions because they found that being less selective in enrollment resulted in significantly worse outcomes. Not exactly a surprise, well at least it shouldn't be.

I don't know how the US works, but in the UK public (private...) schools have incredible facilities for sports, the arts, personal lessons and tutoring, and so on.

Meanwhile the state sector has a lot of crumbling buildings and hand-me-down textbooks.

Public school kids still manage to screw up but they're more likely to land on their feet. Access to the upper levels in careers like law and finance is very much about "polish" (cultural identity) although working class kids sometimes gain entry, often as charity cases.

At the same time public schools used to be notorious for brutal bullying. So survivors are often emotionally traumatised and have had empathy beaten out of them.

In the US public (US terminology) schools are quite well funded, contrary to what many think. We recently hit a record of just under $18k per student per year for high schools. [1] I went to school in some quite low income areas, and the facilities were great. The big issue is that much of the student body was not.

So the facilities, textbooks, and so on were regularly vandalized, stolen, or simply destroyed. But nonetheless we had a nice gym, auditorium, track/field, and so on. We even had things like laser disc players back when that was pretty bleeding edge. In modern times I'd expect to see various luxuries like 3d printers and stuff like that even at low income schools in the US, at least if they haven't been stolen or [intentionally] broken.

If I had to choose for my children between Exeter peers at a US public school, or US public school peers at Exeter, it wouldn't be even remotely close.

[1] - https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2026/school-s...

You are dramatically mistaken about the funding and education quality for low-income school districts. You might find some with good sports facilities, probably from a grant from an outside organization or local college, but anything related to academics, facilities, counseling… forget it. Most public school teachers have to buy their own classroom supplies That is fucked up. I’ve seen districts that don’t have enough available cash to buy food to give everybody a lunch. In one school, a teacher got very sick — they didn’t have enough money to pay a sub, and there wasn’t any other class being taught that we could have been folded into… oh well! Just sit in the library for that period, and everybody gets an A for the year.

My childhood was split between a low income district and an upper-middle-class district. Neither sets of children were likely to vandalize a goddamned thing. In the low-income district, the vibe was militaristic. We were expected to sit with backs straight and our hands folded when not writing. We moved in orderly single-file lines between classrooms and had to line up in formation outside before we were allowed recess. The education was extremely basic. The 5th grade students were barely on ‘chapter books.’ Science class was rote memorization of extremely basic physical science with no experimentation except for one class, the highlight of the year, where we each got a AA battery, two wires, ands a light bulb and had to go through a prescribed set of “experiments” where we would put the wires in various, obviously wrong configurations and finally make a circuit. Art class was still macaroni collages and music class was zero-education sing-alongs from the same song book they used in the 60s. In the upper-middle-class district we were reading Greek mythology and pulling out philosophical themes, exploring people’s emotional motivations, and exploring the historical context. Took pictures with cameras obscura that we made ourselves, made our own Leyden jars and did some very well-designed and open-ended experiments. Art was mostly graphite work from “drawing on the right side of the brain“ where we discussed things like negative space, and we made simple pottery in the school’s ceramic studio.

To imply it was the fault of the student body of that low-income school district that they might have been less engaged or have worse outcomes in life is fucking bananas. Gather more information before making these sweeping generalizations.

You're speaking of elementary which I can't say much one way or the other about in part because I remember things as a child would - I didn't have a 'mature' understanding of what was happening around me back then - I've also never looked up the data on it. I'm referring to middle/high school. And there at least, anything remotely like what you're describing would be highly atypical.

As for the data I've already cited the $18k spent per student which also leads to another common misconception. Low income schools receive more average public funding than high income schools, thanks to various redistributionary measures. Similarly for things like vandalism, 67% of schools report file at least one criminal report on property crime per year. [1] The most common rate is 3-5 per year, followed by 6-10 per year. And that dramatically understates the rates, because most things, as in the vastly overwhelming majority, are not criminally reported.

[1] - https://www.ed.gov/sites/ed/files/offices/OUS/PES/studies-sc...

You can’t make those funding generalizations because the end amount that schools spend on students is defined locally. I just looked in the Massachusetts school funding database. The town I’m not going to out myself as having attended spent ten thousand dollars per year less per student than the Upper-Middle-Class Weston, and the fantastically expensive Cambridge spent 7k per student more than that annually.

Local taxes are where much funding comes from but the redistributionary measures come from both the state and Federal in 'normal' funding as well as a wide array of various program based funding, like Title 1 at the Federal Level. This is why looking up the total amount spent per student is a bit trickier than it might seem. This [1] paper breaks down all funding, with details by state. Check out page 23. So for instance in Massachusetts high poverty districts receive the highest public funding by an very wide margin, with $27,468/student contrasted against a statewide average of $21,767.

What your experience may reflect is more of a rural/urban divide rather than poor/rich. If you happened to live in a low income rural area with few minorities, then your public funding is going to be much less than an urban school with more minorities. You also need to account for basic cost differences, which is going to be factored into redistributionary measures. A dollar goes way further in rural areas than it does urban, which yet further reduces the amount of funding that rural areas receive. Finally schools with higher minority populations tend to have worse outcomes (higher crime, lower scores, etc) which means by the inverse you also receive less funding if you have fewer minorities.

There's even a hint of this possibility in the data. In Massachusetts, the highest poverty districts do indeed receive, by an overwhelming margin, the most funding. But the second group with high levels of 'mid poverty' receives the lowest funding amongst all 4 groups. The data doesn't specify, but I'd expect that this group is significantly comprised of rural and low minority populations.

[1] - https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2024//2024309.pdf

You’re trying to make conclusions about local situations using federal funding data. No matter how many words you type about it, your approach is fundamentally inadequate and you’re making sweeping generalizations based on it. I’m out. Have a nice day.

That's not federal funding data. The paper provides specific numbers on the total funding including local, state, and federal. Looking only at local funding, as you likely did, is completely misleading.

The UK also handles class differently than the US which may account for a lot.

In the US class is largely defined by current net worth. The UK seems to preference heritage and education for determining class hierarchy.

Ah, cause they inherited a ton of cash ya?

There is absolutely no evidence this is true. There are always a few first generation talents who build empires from dirt and nothing (for values of nothing that usually include war, grift, and slavery).

But once an empire is established it becomes largely self-sustaining, and the inheritors get a huge head start over everyone else in their cohort.

Inherited wealth is not self-sustaining at all: if you spend it down, it disappears. Most inheritors of large windfalls will not manage to pass down that wealth in turn; it takes a rare ingrained cultural attitude to make it genuinely "self-sustaining", and even then that really means leaving the wealth as it is and managing it well - not using it to pursue any immediate "head start" in living standards over your peers.

JD Rockefeller actually went to a public school (in the US, not UK meaning).

> The Rotchschilds, the Rockefellers, and the Du Ponts would have done very well in life just as well had they went to public schools

sure, because of their names.

Are you defining "poor" to mean everyone who doesn't send their kids to Philips Exeter?

The public schools in at least my corner of Switzerland are better than the private schools, including Le Rosey. This seems to be the opinion of nearly everyone I have met.

You only attend Le Rosey for the network.

"Public school" in a place like Switzerland is a different world than in the US though

> Education in public schools has turned into AI slop being generated by poorly educated teachers.

Sure, because no one (in government or school admin) wants to spend the money on more teachers. I also take issue with "poorly educated" - the teachers I know have a masters in education, but that only goes so far when you're dealing with an overcrowded and underfunded classroom.

> The benefit richer students have is that, on average, their parents are smarter, more conscientious, etc.

Yup. In general the benefit of schools in richer areas is better parents, rather than better schooling itself.

Depressing, but true.

I would avoid phrasing it as "better". Less wealthy parents are likely working more hours, have to spend more time on household maintenance (don't have a cleaner, can't afford grocery delivery), not to mention the overwhelming stress of struggling to make ends meet. It's not exactly a level playing field.

> I would avoid phrasing it as "better". Less wealthy parents are likely working more hours, have to spend more time on household maintenance (don't have a cleaner, can't afford grocery delivery), not to mention the overwhelming stress of struggling to make ends meet. It's not exactly a level playing field.

Sure, and all of that was included in my comment. It's definitely not a judgement of parents, I am one and it's incredibly difficult even with our relatively high incomes.

> Less wealthy parents are likely working more hours

The top income decile in the U.S. works 10% more hours than the bottom decile. Only a bit over half of low-income kids live in a household where a parent works full time.

Does that account for parents working multiple part-time jobs?

I also wonder how it accounts for salaried vs hourly - I work "40 hours" each week but I know that isn't a consistent 40, it's typically less and sometimes more, but I'm always getting paid a set wage whereas an hourly worker is getting paid exactly what they work (barring wage theft that's more common in lower-income jobs)

> Education for more affluent people is often cheaper per student.

A lot of this is accounting.

You don't need to buy chromebooks for pupils when they already bring their own tablets/laptops. It's not unheard that if there is some initiative requiring equipment (music, sports, smartboards) parents fund that initiative outside tuition costs.

Private schools tend to be controlled-admission and controlled-admission schools can have much narrower variance in skill level. The "dumb" kids do not swallow attention of the teacher and the "super-smart" kids do not get neglected. Richer parents can afford private tutors, closing the gap even further. On top of that, they tend to afford more time to coach their children in the right direction.

All of that costs a small fortune, but is not visible if you compare total state funding of public schools versus admission / tuition costs.

Chromebooks, smartboards, tablets are all horrible for teaching.

I went to chicago public schools and Google gave every kid in the district free chromebooks. So inner city schools dont need to buy chromebooks for their students either it turns out. They were also terrible and pretty much only served to distract

their parents are smarter? lol dayum.

Eh.

Prior to her current role my gf spent about a decade as the head of a very elite private elementary school (she's been in education for 35 years now). Certainly ten figure families represented in the student body with names you would recognize as such. The school had access to all of the resources they could ask for and they did very well on paper. However, the attitude of the students was qualitatively different (and in my gf's opinion much worse) than those of her current students.

It's fun to imagine a collection of rock star educators huddled around every child just constantly feeding their intellectual curiosity, but the reality is most of those kids just aren't hungry. They live lives of comfortable inconsequentiality which, on average, seems to rob something from human curiosity and drive.

I have some cousins (on the wealthier branch of the family) who were the "middle class" students at a school like that. Their dad was a specialist doctor who made a fair amount of money as an expert witness in trials. They came out of it extremely hungry to reach the socioeconomic class of their peers. One is an orthopedic surgeon who did her fellowship in snow sports injuries in Vail, and one is starting his Wharton MBA in the fall.

Meanwhile other relatives who went to good public schools came out of it with a thirst for knowledge and have had eclectic careers with degrees earned out of personal interest, and are happily living middle class lives in midsize cities.

> As always the children of the rich and powerful get bespoke education... You could call it elegant education for a more civilized age...

The rich and powerful pay "fuck you" money for their kids to get the best pre-college educations possible. It takes an incredible amount of willpower for a world-class teacher to say no to that type of money over even high-paying private schools.

This feels like conflating "schools use technology" with "schools outsource thinking to technology"

Keeping down cost per child? What are you talking about? The cost per child has skyrocketed in the US over last 20 years, particularly among the worst-performing schools. Baltimore spends more per child than Mountain View. NYC spends more per child than Palo Alto.

There is a certain view, popular among many people, that poor performing schools perform badly because they are underfunded. It has been vigorously spread by politicians, teachers, and activists. Well, we ran the experiment. With enormous federal and state spending, we managed to mostly equalize the spending, and, in many cases, fund the badly performing schools more than the good ones. The results of the experiment are very clear: additional funding, by and large, does not *cause* significantly improved educational outcomes. Any observed correlation between school funding and outcomes is a result of who lives in the area, and who attends the school. The casual arrow does not go from funding to outcomes, but from the school population to both funding, and, in parallel, to outcomes.

Increased funding did improve educational outcomes. It just didn't improve it enough to be considered worthwhile.

The fact is that educational outcomes are caused by a large number of variables. Areas with (historically) poorer schools have less competent (or more corrupt) administrations so money doesn't go as far. Even with good leadership at the top (superintendent or public school committee), if the source of that money is not something you can rely on consistently enough to pay salaries with then you are not going to see significant changes.

Pre-K education is also critical to determining later school performance, as knowing the alphabet and numbers are practically assumed by kindergarten curriculums as they are covered far too far to be more than a review. But we have not tried that yet, so we'll see if that pans out...

Enormous federal and state spending on what, by whom, directed by whom, for whose financial benefit?

The results of the experiment aren't clear at all. Increased spending as was done here hasn't had good results. That's not an argument against spending, it's an argument for understanding why it didn't work, and what could be done about it.

We have data on this too. If, instead of spending at large, you look at spending on any specific thing (school lunches, after school classes, teacher wages, materials, classroom aids, electronic equipment, facilities, etc), you find the exact same thing: nothing we have tried so far has made any significant difference. The proponents of increased school spendings are completely blind to empirics, and their only answer to that is “we just need to spend even more”.

I suspect one of the big advantages that money brings to the kids of the rich is to have not only one-on-one education, but also the best-of-the-best in each subject.

That said:

> classical studies

While this may be the "cornerstone of an elite higher education" as Wikipedia calls it, IMO (like studying Shakespeare[0]) I'm not convinced it is a productive use of time.

Don't get me wrong, nerd out about anything you like, but a lot of the world shifted since then. The overlap between what you learn from studying people who thought the sun was a chariot drawn over the sky by magic horses and that the Sahara was caused by some idiot driving them wrong, and what you need to know to deal with a highly connected globally integrated supply chain, is not exactly zero; but childhood is limited and you are likely better off focusing on what's actually in the modern world.

That said, of the few ways it is still useful is likely as shibboleth for the powerful to know one another.

[0] Shakespeare's closer to us than the ancient Greeks and Romans, of course, but still a very different world, the plot of e.g. Merchant of Venice just can't happen today. Plus he was seen as merely "good" rather than "the best"[1] within his own life, was clearly reworking other older tales for his audience[2], his plays were his era's version of somewhere between MCU, a soap opera, and stand up: the goal was bums on seats not high art, it was watched by a broad audience including normal people not just the era's version of evening-wear, crowd participation was a thing, actors would need to be reminded their lines in the middle, etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation_of_William_Shakespe...

[2] e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_of_Hamlet, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amleth, why yes I do only know about Amleth from SMBC

> The overlap between what you learn from studying people who thought the sun was a chariot drawn over the sky by magic horses and that the Sahara was caused by some idiot driving them wrong, and what you need to know to deal with a highly connected globally integrated supply chain, is not exactly zero.

The classical epics speak of heroism and virtue. Understanding certain human morality which is timeless is very useful.

It's not like education in practical domains like CS or supply chain are highly efficient either. Something which forms your outlook is important. While most of the modern literature is not that influential, kids should read the Iliad, Odyssey and Havamal.

Value in knowing that virtue ethics is a thing, yes, but also value in knowing how it compares with consequentialism and deontology.

Classical heroes are not generally good people in the modern sense; they are powerful people. Think The Boys and Watchmen rather than by Marvel and DC. Even supposedly anti-hero modern characters like The Punisher and Deadpool are closer to/less far from the modern understanding of heroism than the ancient heroes are. Though I guess James Bond would be about right, he's a lot more like the classical heroes in that he's generally misogynistic and his violence is directed at The Other, with Q serving in the role of Hermes giving Perseus winged sandals, a sword, and a cap of invisibility.

> Havamal

ᚦᛖᚹᛁ᛫ᚲᚨᚾ᛫ᛞᛟ᛫ᚦᚨᛏ᛫ᚠᛟᚱ᛫ᚠᚢᚾ

ᛁ᛫ᚨᛗ᛫ᚾᛟᛏ᛫ᚲᛟᚾᚹᛁᚾᚲᛖᛞ᛫ᛁᛏ᛫ᛁᛊ᛫ᛗᛟᚱᛖ᛫ᚹᚨᛚᚢᚨᛒᛚᛖ᛫ᚦᚨᚾ᛫ᚹᚨᛏᚲᚺᛁᛜ᛫ᚲᚨᛈᛏᚨᛁᚾ᛫ᛈᛚᚨᚾᛖᛏ᛫ᛟᚱ᛫ᛈᛚᚨᚹᛁᛁᛜ᛫ᛞᚢᚾᚷᛖᛟᚾᛊ᛫ᚨᚾᛞ᛫ᛞᚱᚨᚷᛟᚾᛊ

(Was I taught this in school? No. Did I have the kind of mother who kept some runic divination books around even though I was theoretically being raised Catholic and going to church in part because the best local school was a Catholic school, and thereby teach myself to read the inscription around the outside of the dustcover of the first edition of The Hobbit? Yes).

> Classical heroes are not generally good people in the modern sense; they are powerful people.

I think it's more apt to say that classical heroes were envisioned as 'real' people. While I think almost all people are inherently moral, nobody is "good" in the way that we often like to portray - it's a facade. That facade did not exist in the past, and I think it makes the works consequently much more human in nature.

Shakespeare really hurt you didn't he :D

IMO study whatever you like, no? For me being deeply immersed in a topic that doesn't 1:1 translate to an improvement on the CV is its own pleasure. This way I get to read (complex stuff) for pleasure because it isn't connected to the career hamster-wheel. There is no pressure, while at the same time directly improving my foundation - whether that is Philosophy, pure Math or niche-History does it matter?

> better off focusing on what's actually in the modern world.

this might change your mind: https://www.suhrkamp.de/rights/book/andreas-reckwitz-loss-fr... (If you only want to study what's actually happening in the modern world, this is the one that explains the loss from Modernity through a sociological lense)

I recall N.N. Taleb also making some good points about why to read books that have stood the test of time rather than a best-seller.

> Shakespeare really hurt you didn't he :D

Nah, just find him overrated.

I give the elevator pitch version, people respond as if I've not given it any thought at all, so I might as well add a few more words in the first version so I don't have to reply with a metaphorical eye-roll.

> this might change your mind: https://www.suhrkamp.de/rights/book/andreas-reckwitz-loss-fr... (If you only want to study what's actually happening in the modern world, this is the one that explains the loss from Modernity through a sociological lense)

Thanks for the link, but I already have quite a lot on my to-read list.

> I recall N.N. Taleb also making some good points about why to read books that have stood the test of time rather than a best-seller.

Thinking of other authors I find overrated… :P

If you want to effectively acquire a broad understanding of the human condition as it has been understood throughout history, the great books of the classical tradition (including, yes, myths and fables that talk about e.g. the sun being driven across the sky by magic horses!) will do a far better job of that than just about anything that was written in the 20th or 21st centuries. Young kids have the kind of cognitive development that's required to make good progress on that, while they would be very limited wrt. understanding anything other than the very basics of math and science.

αἴκα.

Less laconically, point is "as it has been understood throughout history" << "as is today".

You want to understand today? That means following this, both at a surface and meta level: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sHBb4cMUsTs

This is so endearing and so rad at the same time :)

AND totally on point.-

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