And the intergenerationally poor often can't even see the value in attempting to succeed in high school.
I disagree on a lot of this.
1. Money does not dictate how a family may feel about the value of education. There are countless people living in poverty who understand the value of education and want nothing more than to be able to provide that education for their children and themselves. They may not have the money to ensure their kids can get the education needed to succeed, that doesn't mean they don't understand the value.
2. Money does not equal intelligence. And lack of money does not equal lack of intelligence.
Quite simply money = opportunity. Not just in education but in influence, opportunity, and chances.
No argument on that from me. At the same time I have defined "success" differently at various stages of life. While I very much value education for many reasons, I do believe that it is often a mistake to pursue an education for the purpose of being financially successful and assuming that great financial success will be the foundation of great happiness. Some people learn early on what will make them happiest in life and they pursue it with great passion. I define doing and being what truly makes you happy as succeeding in life.
The reason they typically don't attend Harvard is that they're not exceptional academic performers and/or they're not rich and powerful.
And the intergenerationally poor often can't even see the value in attempting to succeed in high school.
No argument on that from me. At the same time I have defined "success" differently at various stages of life. While I very much value education for many reasons, I do believe that it is often a mistake to pursue an education for the purpose of being financially successful and assuming that great financial success will be the foundation of great happiness. Some people learn early on what will make them happiest in life and they pursue it with great passion. I define doing and being what truly makes you happy as succeeding in life.
Harvard these days expects national/international awards and likes to 'sculpt' their classes. Now if among the tens of thousands of applicants they've got a space for a jazz soloist and your K-12 doesn't even offer music lessons? You can't afford private lessons or even an instrument? Good luck!
I've read a few of these "how to get into harvard by a harvard admit" and practically everything they list in terms of ECs wasn't even a possibility in my entire county. I see them brush off things like "FBLA nationals" and "FCCLA" and i'm like wtf are those?
You're right that many are slackers, seeing the situation as hopeless, which is foolish because they still could get into very good schools if only their grades and tests are decent. But even the few who really try have no shot at harvard.
And that's fine. Harvard is probably the best overall institution of higher education in the world. There is no way to mass produce a Harvard education whereby everyone gets a Harvard degree, and even if there were, it would just devalue (make meaningless) a Harvard diploma.
So many people concerned with educational inequality end up sidetracked and bitching about privilege and wishing they had it instead of focusing on improving education. It is much more feasible to improve access to education (using modern technology) than it is to try to knock privileged people down and hand out free "opportunities" to people who don't give a **** about it in the first place. Creating two problems to try to fix one.
Then get a part time job like I did while I was going to school. Or you can do a few years in the military and get out with some additional skills and the GI Bill. Hell they might just enjoy it and stay in as I did. Now I make a very good living and get all the being it's as pass the GI bill to my son so he can go to school. There are many many ways to get ahead in the US if you make good choices and work hard. Always making excuses for other people does not do anyone any good.
And you're still starting at a disadvantage.
I took the military route, and now I am limited on what I can do because I am too old for some jobs or at least to excel well in some jobs (even only being in my 30s).
My entire point has been that there absolutely is some unfair educational opportunities in this country, no matter how much people want to say differently, and those inequalities do make it harder for those at the bottom to push to the top and easier for those families at the top to stay there. And it simply is not all about working hard and the choices alone that a person makes. Not all choices are available to everyone.
That is because you have chosen to stay in the military. You could have gotten out after your first enlistment and enjoyed the same benefits or joined the national guard. You made the choice not to. That is not a disadvantage but a choice.
You are right that not everyone has exactly the same staring point and that some have it harder than others. I don't think anyone would really argue differently. And it is not just money. Some people have better parents and I would bet that makes more of a difference than money. But that is life. You will never create a world where everyone starts out exactly the same. Nor should you. One of the reasons I work as hard as I do and save as much as I do is so my sons will hopefully not have to work when they go to school. Are you going to start saying that parents who do as I do can no longer help their kids. Are we going to start taking kids away from parents who the government decides are not perfect parents. That is the only way you are going to make everyone star out equal and that is not a country I think many people would agree.
The fact of the matter is that in this country anyone who is born without major mental or physical handicaps can be as successful as they want to be by making good decisions and working hard. And before anyone starts going off about how many poor work hard and that is true they decision part is just as important. Working hard as a Mcdonalds fry cook for your whole life may be hard work (not that it really is) but it is not a good choice. You need both.
But statistics show that your average poor parent is not as good as your average well to do or middle class parent. Hence the extremely different numbers of poor kids who drop out of school, have kids out of wedlock and spend time in jail vs the number of rich or middle class kids who do the same. I would be willing to bet the same bad decision making ability that keeps them poor also has them being less than great parents.And still would have faced greater challenges. Plus, the military does not pay for 8 years of college, especially not at a major university.
Money makes much more of a difference than parenting, when the parents are both relatively good, caring parents.
And as for the other stuff, you are going off on some pretty stupid tangents and strawmen arguments. I never suggested anywhere close to what you are talking about with parents and children. I am saying that there is a definite disadvantage for poor kids when it comes to education in this country, a disadvantage that makes a huge difference in opportunities, and which should not exist, at least to the extent that it does.
But statistics show that your average poor parent is not as good as your average well to do or middle class parent. Hence the extremely different numbers of poor kids who drop out of school, have kids out of wedlock and spend time in jail vs the number of rich or middle class kids who do the same. I would be willing to bet the same bad decision making ability that keeps them poor also has them being less than great parents.
As to the rest how else do you plan on making everyone start at the exact same spot without it.
Statistics can be very misleading. When it comes to poor parents vs rich parents, are the differences in the circumstances taken into account?
There are a lot of really great poor parents out there too. Parents who put all their children through school, didn't have any with teens having children, and who have none who did any time in jail. Whereas, there are also plenty of things that rich parents can do to simply keep their children out of jail where poor parents can't. Even where they live can affect such things. The very difference in how you even are showing that people look at rich kids or even middle class kids compared to poor kids can be the difference. Who would you believe if there was a fight between two students, one's rich or middle class and one's poor? There is only their own versions, no cameras, no witnesses or any witnesses are friends of one of the students or the other. Because this is part of the problem. Plenty of people out there who would automatically either a) blame everything on the poor kid or b) treat both of them as if they both share equal blame, even if that isn't the case, and it is just to avoid the possibility of a lawsuit, which would be likely to come from the rich/middle class parents than the poor parents.
There are ways to make things more even, better. Ensure people have the opportunities to go to school, get the upper education. Finding ways to reduce college costs, even if it pisses off the colleges. We have educational
Poll: Economic Disparity = Education Inequality?
The advent of the Internet has changed that dynamic entirely. Why blow $50,000+ on a college (and all of the bull**** "required classes") when the same information can be learned for the price of a monthly Internet bill, that is, if a person even pays for it and just doesn't leech the connection?
The same could have been said about libraries, but I agree with what you're saying. There is value to learning in an academic environment and, for better or worse, having a certificate of successfully completing a degree program. Though I don't know that it's worth tens of thousands of dollars per year for two years before kids have even decided what career track appeals to them.
The same could have been said about libraries, but I agree with what you're saying. There is value to learning in an academic environment and, for better or worse, having a certificate of successfully completing a degree program. Though I don't know that it's worth tens of thousands of dollars per year for two years before kids have even decided what career track appeals to them.
It turns too many into robots, and with things like the internet and the information age its even less vital.
If anything, it's taught me it's become more vital. People have taken an inherently undemocratic hierarchy of knowledge and quality of material and proposed it was somehow democratic. The internet has become a place where everyone's source material is seen with equal value and democratized to such an extent that the average person is somehow granted equal weight to that of the expert in the field. It's preposterous.
But they're not. The reason so many schools in poor neighborhoods are bad is because the parents don't care. They don't get involved. They don't care about education. They don't instill a love of learning in their children. Most kids drop out before they graduate high school. None of that has anything to do with the amount of money someone has, but with the amount of interest they have. We just have this really stupid and destructive ghetto culture in place that teaches people not to care about getting an education because the government will give them a check and crime pays a lot more. They do it to themselves.
Studies have shown that children coming from families of the top 10% of income generally had better test scores than children from the the lower 90% of income. Not only do they generally have better test scores, but also are much more likely to get into an elite college. For decades, parents from higher income families spend an exponential amount of money on learning expense for their children. These numbers are only increasing, possibly giving children from lower income families a massive disadvantage.
So my questions to you guys--the Debate Politics community--are:
Could the possible increase in educational inequality of children of different social classes be due to the wide economic disparity that we have today between the rich and the poor?
Do you think there should be more elite educational programs for children of the lower class?
Also, what other factors could possibly be involved?
Growing wealth gap may threaten education
Some Other Good Reads:
Money Makes A Difference, Even In Kindergarten
Inequality among students rises - Business - The Boston Globe
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/e...grows-between-rich-and-poor-studies-show.html
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