Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by yodsanklai | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

yodsanklai

Social mobility is very low in France as well and education is pretty much free.

View on HN

France has relatively high Social Mobility.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/may/22/social-...

Excuse my stupid question, but what does social mobility mean? [serious]

Quite simply: The ability to move between social classes.

  Social mobility is the movement of individuals, families,
  households, or other categories of people within or 
  between social strata in a society. It is a change in 
  social status relative to others' social location within a 
  given society.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility

Social mobility is low everywhere in the world, and education is just one small factor so it's not easy to find a correlation there without looking at the bigger picture.

Maybe social mobility is low everywhere because smart parents breed smart kids. But considering genetics is deemed to be politically incorrect.

It's only politically incorrect when it's used as an excuse to ignore legitimate social issues as you've done here.

Because it's not the genes but the social environment which shapes the individual's progress in a society.

[Citation needed]

I was under the impression that in France their universities are operated in similar manner and number as their high schools.

Combined with funding based only on the number of students provided by the govt. the quality in education possibly doesn't differ enough to provide any effect on social mobility.

Well the french elite is commonly described as being a pretty incestuous affair. There a few elite schools, and the countries top politicians and industry leaders are all recruited from there.

Not saying they are worse than the german system, but certainly not better.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com