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Comment by Jun8 | Hacker News Reader

What a waste! Government agencies should provide data, supporting services, etc. when needed, they should not be developers of solutions, because, due to their very nature, they cannot do it. Curiously enough, money is not a motivator in this realm for better work, it's like watering the Sahara in the hopes that suddenly vegetation will sprout.

What Zuckerberg should have done is to put out $10M-$20M of that money as prizes for small non/for-profit startups to come up with ingenious solutions. Then, after this survival of the fittest mode ends, push money into the promising ones.

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> What Zuckerberg should have done is to put out $10M-$20M of that money as prizes for small non/for-profit startups to come up with ingenious solutions.

What kind of solution would a startup come up with for a kid who doesn't sleep under the same roof three nights running or who doesn't have a single role model who succeeded at school and is doing well professionally because they live in an area which has been systematically screwed over (race, class, etc.) for so long that everyone they know has given up?

There are a few areas where the tech-world style approach could help — building better software for class management, lesson planning, etc. if for no reason other than reducing the amount going to huge, under-delivering enterprise software vendors – but most of the problems are areas where we've chosen not to invest as a society: jobs, housing, medical care — critically long-term disability care — etc. Ask a teacher how it feels when a bright student starts missing school because their family was evicted or is being pressured not to go to college because their family wants them to watch a younger/disabled sibling while the parents are at work.

The best use for that $100M probably would have been opening some sort of high-headcount employer in the area to help break the cycle — even a call center job is a big step up if it provides a consistent, livable income.

>The best use for that $100M probably would have been opening some sort of high-headcount employer

That assumes these people are employable or want to work.

We agree the biggest problem for these kids is family life, I just don't think that will stop with employment or even just handing their parents money.

> That assumes these people are employable or want to work.

Do you have any reason to believe that we have a huge population of parents who aren't willing to work to provide for their families? Skills can be a challenge but it almost always comes down to other factors like whether jobs are available in their area, transportation and child care availability, and whether things like public assistance benefits were set up in a way which penalizes anyone who gets a job.

I haven't gone door to door and done a proper survey if that's what you mean. But yeah, I've met people who either have avoided getting a job or lament not having one despite spending most of their time watching TV all day.

>things like public assistance benefits were set up in a way which penalizes anyone who gets a job.

So true. However, in many cultures pride is more important than the monetary benefit of free loading.

>"That assumes these people are employable or want to work."

I'd say that seems more reasonable than assuming the opposite, but not at all surprising that you would feel otherwise [1][2].

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7700903

2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7566117

Pointing out that I don't think people who happen to be minorities should be treated differently doesn't help your argument.

I love people who think they're not racist then make assumptions like yours.

Tragically opening a call center likely wouldn't help at all. Many people in poverty in the US are actually better off staying unemployed because their entitlements (food stamps, housing assistance, free child care, etc) go down or disappear if they get a job.

Our current setup is severely broken and full of perverse incentives that trap people in poverty. In an effort to prevent abuse we've stripped eligibility for assistance programs to only the near-destitute but then set the payouts at a higher level than many of those people are likely to earn on re-entering the workforce.

Dozens of programs, at both a state and federal level, would need to be overhauled so that the incentives led people out of poverty instead of creating a chasm between government dependence and entry-level labor.

Very strong agreement on this point – one of the strongest arguments for those basic income schemes is that it would get rid of the welter of conflicting incentives the current patchwork creates.

And then we'd be reading about the folly of the scheme's over-reliance on the private sector.

They were not aiming at the root of the problem: massive poverty and massive inequality.

In fact I'd go further, $100 million is nothing. What is probably needed is billions of dollars worth of investment in public services.

Call me pragmatic but I see those problems to be not (easily) solvable. Rather than endlessly debate about what the cause is, my proposal would be to involve young, energetic outsiders to come up with solutions and move quickly to implement them. Not all of these will be workable but some will (remember the Go entry from yesterday and how Monte Carlo methods are much better in developing strong AI compared to truing to come up with good computer strategies? Similar approach).

"Young, energetic outsiders" in the "startup set" are disproportionately likely to also be in the set of individuals from privileged backgrounds; in America this means they're also more likely to be white and male. They haven't got the empirical foundation necessary to even comprehend the depth or scope of the problems, much less devise "ingenious" solutions to them.

They haven't got the empirical foundation necessary to even comprehend the depth or scope of the problems

How ironic. You write off an entire group of people because of their background as not being able to understand a problem and then throw out the privilege (AKA: "You are being preemptively blacklisted from this argument) card. In a thread about education.

Seriously?

Note that "not having the background to understand a problem" isn't the same as "incapable of understanding a problem." However, having the capability and having the experience are two different things.

If a group of people haven't got the background to understand a problem, they aren't likely to produce a solution that is viable. I don't see how that's a controversial statement. We "exclude" on this basis all the time in our every day lives (e.g. by selecting doctors for solutions to medical problems, as opposed to, say, firemen or physicists), because it's entirely rational and the empirically correct thing to do.

The answer to that is to get people the background to understand a problem.

People go to to med school to become doctors, you don't automatically blacklist everyone of a particular socioeconomic/racial background (NB: there's a word for this..) as being incapable of having the background necessary to be a doctor.

Yes, and "incapable" isn't anything I suggested applied to "young, energetic" types. That was an equivalence you drew while your knee was jerking.

No, you merely suggested it applied to "privileged" white males.

I did no such thing. I wrote, quite explicitly, that they haven't the empirical foundation; not that they aren't capable of obtaining it.

And even that is an unsupported assertion.

My point was that making a full understanding of the students' plight a prerequisite to helping them is a mistake. I teach programming to a low-income high school in the South side of Chicago. I am male and "white" and was born and raised in a different country far away in quite a different culture. I cannot even begin to understand the problems these kids are facing everyday.

Yet, there I am helping them, raising money for equipment, buying them rPi's, trying to teach them Python, implementing software for their FRC robot and trying to act as an all around mentor.

My cost to the CPS is negative (I bring in all the money, $1k-$2k here, from my company). This is the solution I'm talking about. Of course, my impact is minimal. But money from donors such as Zuckerberg could be used to create bigger grassroots efforts and amplify the impact greatly.

Ask yourself: What is the solution that YOU suggest? Reading the thread I was only one concrete suggestions, using the $100M to open a calling center in the area. Is that the best we can do?

Call me pessimistic, but I think the last thing underprivileged education needs is a bunch of douchey "fail fast" startup types "disrupting" a problem they could never understand.

No, they need every bit of help, even from douchey people who can get off their asses and try to help rather than wisecracking on HN. Have you ever done something to help underprivileged kids? If so, try provide feedback rather than witticisms.

>>> They were not aiming at the root of the problem: massive poverty and massive inequality.

While this is completely true, you also have to factor in politics. Take a look what's happening in NYC right now. You have charter schools that are doing incredible work in low income areas and De Blasio wants to shut them down:

"Bill de Blasio, who repeatedly singled her out on the campaign trail as the embodiment of what he saw was wrong in schooling, and who last week followed his word with deed, canceling plans for three of her schools in New York City while leaving virtually all other charter proposals untouched."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/nyregion/de-blasio-and-bui...

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