[algo646464]

I sometimes think, one way to break this cycle is to send the all the kids to boarding school or military school. It could put them in an environment free from their background circumstances. It is of course a harsh thing to do, but I think maybe it could work.

[dragonwriter]

> I sometimes think, one way to break this cycle is to send the all the kids to boarding school or military school.

This is a pretty standard solution by people working from abstractions that aren't checked against the realities of people.

It’s also a stunningly bad idea that tends not to survive past very initial steps toward implementation (on a general societal level; it has often been implemented in a more limited way targeted at disfavored minorities where it is a component of genocide by destroying the people as a people) in real societies, even when there is a powerful governing group devoted religiously to an ideology which embraces it.

[johnchristopher]

> send the all the kids to boarding school or military school. It could put them in an environment free from their background circumstances.

It is a common meme in some circles that sending (problematic) kids to boarding or military school will "set them straight". To me, it's basically just hope that a bit more violence will work.

Also, after 6 years spent in an environment where you are told what to do every minutes, where rules are clear and mostly non-negotiable, bed and meal times always the same... what happens when you are put back in the regular world ? I exaggerate things to make a point, it's not black and white but still.

[pnutjam]

Can confirm. My oldest daughter roomed in College with a girl who came from a structured boarding school. She was a mess. I also recall a similar experience when I was in College.

[dustintrex]

"Breaking the cycle by sending the kids away" has a long history of well-intentioned attempts nearly always leading to disastrous outcomes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Generations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_sc...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55238090

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_children_by_Nazi...

[algo646464]

That is a good point. But all these had racist reasons at their core. Can this be better implemented today? With extensive supervision and scrutiny. For example, teenagers routinely join the army, and spend time learning and training at what is essentially a boarding school. It seems to work quite well.

[Broken_Hippo]

I'm not sure replacing racism with classism (oh, you are poor, you need to go away to school) is much better.

Extensive supervision and scrutiny? I mean, are we not doing some of this with public schools now? And if not, why not?

And seriously, we (in the US) allow lots of options for troubled kids without supervision ("work the bad out of you), we've allowed conversion therapy for LGBT+ children, have little oversight on for-profit schools and we allow folks to force their religion on their children, even if the 16- or 17-year-old doesn't believe.

I highly doubt there would be oversight.

I'd also like to point out that the Canadian schools were really, really recent, and I don't think much has changed since.

[arcticbull]

In a some cases they had racism at their core - but that's a step removed.

They thought that the parents were (for whatever reason) incapable of raising their children appropriately and that the best way to properly raise the children was away from their homes, their cultures and their problems. They may even have thought their goals were noble and justified - as most folks tend to.

I cannot see a meaningful difference between taking kids away from their parents for racial reasons, for class reasons or really any other reason.

The issue isn't necessarily why they saw them as inferior, it's that they saw them as inferior.

> For example, teenagers routinely join the army, and spend time learning and training at what is essentially a boarding school.

This choice is made by the family and the individual. This is not the same thing. A meaningful harm vector is the removal of autonomy.

[throwaway0a5e]

>But all these had <insert thing that is considered bad in the current day> reasons at their core. Can this be better implemented today?

The people sending the Indians away to religious schools in the 1910s said the same damn thing about prior attempts to do the same damn thing.

[JoeAltmaier]

Once people leave a structured environment (home, boarding school etc) and live 'on their own' even if it's just a dorm room, then tend to act as one who has been leaning against a post, and you take the post away suddenly. It can talk a while for them to stand up straight again - keep their room clean, do their laundry on time, manage their money, wash and dress suitable for the situation.

I could always tell in college, which people had not lived on their own before. They were a mess.

[cloudedcordial]

One of the students from my high school, who was orphaned at 11, enrolled himself to the military university. At that school, he got free education, free uniform and free boarding. Every graduates must commit themselves to serve the military for a number of years. He possibly figured out that it's a good way to be independent, to get a quality education and to earn a decent living.

That school in my country has not been trivial to get accepted. He aimed for good grades at high school and participated in sports teams.

[watwut]

Boarding schools did not had that effect. Everyone including teachers is aware of who is who. Plus, they don't exactly raise people to be better.

[johnebgd]

Microsoft introduced the School of the Future that had incredible results.

https://news.softpedia.com/news/Microsoft-039-School-of-the-...

I’m surprised it didn’t catch on more. Maybe others on here were involved and can shed some light on why this initiative stalled?

[dragonwriter]

> Microsoft introduced the School of the Future that had incredible results.

Your article cites no actual results.

In reality, the problems it seems to have had is that the basic idea just doesn't work: the first years were plain rocky. [0] When it dealt with some of the early problems, it got good results, to the extent it did (and certainly some measures were quite good), largely by costing more, even though the fundamental concept was to prove a scalable, efficient model by requiring no additional funding (so it had to try to close the gap by aggressive outside fundraising to meet the additional costs.) [1] When the baseline funding for public schools dropped, the extra cost of SoF’s original model became even less sustainable. [2]

The school still exists, but I can't find anything after 2014 even treating it as a particularly interesting thing.

[0] https://www.eschoolnews.com/2009/06/01/school-of-the-future-...

[1] https://technical.ly/philly/2012/11/12/high-school-of-the-fu...

[2] https://www.phillytrib.com/news/past-problems-saddle-school-...

[anovikov]

I'm thinking of this and i can't see it working. All previous attempts were usually executed on racist grounds, and i don't think we can do the same on non-racist grounds because poverty itself is a result of either intrinsic differences between races, or racism itself, so racial layout of kids in those boarding schools will be similar to the racial layout in prisons... It's hard to expect anything but radicalisation happening there.

[vladvasiliu]

GP did say "all the kids", so maybe they actually meant all the kids, as in rich, poor, in-between. So that it wouldn't be based on family income or school sector or what-have-you.

Of course, this could be construed as "discrimination" against the better off, since they have to go through what seems like a tough time "just because of the poor people".

[rsj_hn]

There is a long history of marxist groups trying to destroy the family by forcibly removing children and making them live in various communal camps. For example this was done in forced collectivization projects in the USSR and China, and also by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

I really recommend watching the film "The Killing Fields", in order to see this in action.

Both the USSR and China ended up abandoning these efforts and now acknowledge them as terrible failures. The Khmer Rouge had to be forced out via military invasion.

Always the justification is the fact that smarter parents tend to have smarter kids, patient parents tend to have patient kids, etc. E.g. most things in life are at least half heritable, and so you will see both competency and dysfunction cluster in families. This offended the levelers greatly and so they decided that families need to be broken up and the kids randomized in order to achieve a Great Leveling.

The result has always been catastrophic, not to mention a gross human rights violation.

[arcticbull]

Hardly just the Marxists - the Nazis gave it a go, the Danes gave it a go and so did the Canadians [1]. This idea spans the political spectrum, and it tends to go, er, predictably.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2021/sep/06...

[refurb]

Meh… the Canadian example is more complex than the article infers. The idea is that all children should be educated in the public system. (we still do it today - education is mandatory). For First Nations in remote communities, those children would be required to attend residential schools since no local school existed.

If anything the mentality has more similarities to race relations today - “the White Man’s burden” of helping these cultures “bring themselves up”. Back then they took kids from parents and gave them a European education, and told them their current culture should be forgotten.

Today we just get rid of failing grades, calculus in high school, and standardized testing and implement racial quotas. In the end it’s the same - assuming we know best for other groups even if in the end it harms them.

[arcticbull]

Indeed, I didn't mean to equate them in any way other than "children were removed from their parents and educated according to prevailing practices." I suspect each example is quite unique.

[anovikov]

Oh well this is a terrible idea beyond imagination. Even just simply "solving" poverty by the means of good old segregation, delimiting poor places with barbed wire, sounds better to me.

[MomoXenosaga]

America is actually surprisingly socialist. Children from all backgrounds go to the same school.

In my country the middle class guards their children from the deplorables. Education is no longer equal for all.

[anovikov]

It's not, because America is highly segregated by self-increasing difference in school quality (because more expensive homes in the area yield more property taxes to the municipality which are used to fund school), and better schools make richer people move to the place, driving up both home prices, and school qualities too by improving racial and social mix of students, and it goes on and on in a self-propelling virtuous cycle. As a result most places are strictly segregated and no, children from all backgrounds don't go to the same school because they don't live (poor can't afford) in the same school district.