alt Hacker NewsI dunno, maybe it differs by country/location but my perception is that school was never capable to educate beyond some basic mediocrity level. Mostly it's an institution imposed by the state to process the children while parents are working. And the way to actually teach your kids something never really changed since the times of the elite few versus the mass of peasants: private tutoring.
Now it's true that with basic access to education for masses, a few more poor smart kids that would otherwise become fishmongers or something, now have the chance to raise above their starting condition. But the reality never changed and never will: the vast majority of people are not very bright. And making it easier for them to be dumb and get away with it doesn't help (smartphones and now AI).
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We could pay teachers even half of the median salary for HN users, and then see if outcomes improve?
Schools can educate well beyond that level, provided they are resourced. Bloom’s 2 sigma problem comes to mind (1).
Education also ends up suffering because its seen as a support role, teachers are not valued, and “He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches".
Education is also political today. Science based education is an outright target. Increasing government spending to improve outcomes is also a contested issue, and in America this is met with arguments about bad teachers, unions, and privatization/vouchers.
There is much that can be done to improve educational outcomes, but like everything, it is contested.
There are a few people with a powerful platform in terms of money and influence for whom it would be much simpler if the majority of people were not capable of pointing out BS or seeing how they're getting screwed. Purely coincidentally I'm sure the loudest media voices constantly declare various versions of how we should throw in the towel on educating the majority of people while also funding initiatives to enshittify public education and it would be better for most people to go into the trades and not worry their little heads about how the wider world works.
Meanwhile those people's own children are getting educated at schools with no technology allowed and are not going into trades. So it seems it's both possible to educate people given enough effort and a lot of people are capable of tertiary+ education given the right intellectual capital.
> But the reality never changed and never will: the vast majority of people are not very bright
Nature vs nurture, the old argument...
Of course, you got what one might flippantly call "the inbreds from Alabama", or those whose parents suffered from substance abuse or other issues (obviously, for the mother the risk is much higher, but also the father's health has a notable impact on sperm quality). These kids, particularly those suffering from FAS (fetal alcohol abuse)? As hard as it sounds, they often enough are headed for a life behind institutional bars. FAS is no joke, and so are many genetic defects. That's nature, no doubt - but still, we as a society should do our best to help these kids to grow to the best they reasonably can (and maybe, with gene therapy, we can even "fix" them).
But IMHO, these kids where "nature" dominates are a tiny minority - and nurture is the real problem we have to tackle as societies. We are not just failing the kids themselves by letting them grow up in poverty, we are failing our society. And instead of pseudo elite tech bro children and nepo babies collecting millions of dollars for the x-th dating app, NFT or whatever scam - I'd rather prefer to see people who actually lived a life beyond getting spoiled rotten to have a chance.
>I dunno, maybe it differs by country/location but my perception is that school was never capable to educate beyond some basic mediocrity level.
You just need to look at educational league tables between countries to see there is a spectrum of results and some places are much better than others.
Personally I think the problems are rooted in inequality. If the elite all send their children to private schools then why would they care about the poor state of public schools. The country that regularly comes out at the top of the league table for educational attainment has almost no private schools.