[ChuckMcM]

Totally agree. My kids have gone to the public high school and a large fraction (more than 20%) of the students there could be getting an education but they choose not to.

I don't know why this is, but I know of no counter argument that supports why an individual, who gets to school, has the books and supplies provided for them, and teachers willing to help them with any issues they are having, choose not to learn. These are not kids who just don't do homework, they do no work at all. They are disruptive in class, they harass other students outside of class, why? It is not because they 'lack jobs' (which they aren't helping by not applying themselves to learning), it is not because their home situation is untenable (they could be homeless for all I know but they are at school and have all of the equipment they need to participate there).

No amount of 'money' is going to change this population of non-students. Their burdened cost is higher as other students get less done because of their antics.

[hackinthebochs]

The problem is pretty simple to identify in my opinion. These people live in a culture of anti-education. This is going to take a lot of money to counter. The cheapest way to counter it is probably to simply pay students for good grades, starting as young as possible. Create an external motivation to learn and apply yourself where there otherwise would be none.

[tomjen3]

I don't think you can counter it with money at all. Even if you pay them for good grades they are just going to find a way to cheat so they can get the money without doing the work.

Maybe a better solution would be to turn the public schools in the worst failing districts into something like the twenty-first century version of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlisle_Indian_Industrial_Scho...] (without the physical abuse and with more than just training for lower level work).

[hackinthebochs]

I don't think you can dismiss money as incentive so easily. There is evidence that paying kids does in fact work (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1978758-1,0...). The point in starting the kids off as young as possible is that it will develop in them good habits. Not to mention the effect that an external incentive for kids in an entire region can have on the culture itself.

Poor black and hispanic kids are the same as everyone else in that they have no internal motivation to work hard at something unpleasant. The difference with white and asians is that they have the external incentive of a culture that supports working (reasonably) hard at school and becoming successful. Money is simply a hack to create this external incentive.

[ChuckMcM]

I guess I'm less willing to generalize than you are that the roots are an 'anti-education' culture. It hasn't been my experience that these 'slackers' (for lack of a better term) are disproportinally represented by any specifically identifiable group. They express a common 'you can't make me do this' kind of attitude but beyond that much of the correlation seems to fall off.

There is clearly a 'too cool for school' factor, but this could just be a rationalization. And there seems to be some correlation with family engagement as well. I really don't know what drives this attitude. My view of it externally is that there is no physical, mental, or equipment related barrier to their participation in the education process, they just don't. And what alarms me is that they seem to represent such a large fraction of the total population at the school.

I suppose we could come up with an experiment where we offered a cash incentive to some and none to a control group to see how it affected their participation. Something to put forward at the next PTA meeting.

[jes5199]

At least some of the time that students don't care about learning is because teachers have failed to engage them. For example, most people have no idea why math might be interesting or fun, and the education system has for the most part only shown them ways it can be boring, difficult, and miserable. The same goes for literature! And history! And pretty much every elementary and high school class, actually. Some students are good at plowing through boring and difficult tasks, and some of those students are good at finding the secret fascinating concepts buried within those tasks ... but it's a lot to ask of people. Unfortunately, I don't have any idea how to inspire people en mass, but I'm pretty sure that the American public school system is not doing it, either.

[hackinthebochs]

Check my response to your sister comment: someone did actually do a controlled experiment. Engagement went up a great deal.

The anti-education culture definitely isn't isolated to minorities; it's spreading through the broader culture. Perhaps it was always there, its just recently it's becoming so not having a good education is a life sentence of menial dead end jobs so its getting more attention. Although I would disagree that it isn't disproportionately represented in minorities. Minorities experience it much more intensely because there aren't any competing ideals to help steer them in a positive direction.

[ChuckMcM]

Thanks for the link, I was also looking at some work that was recently published about measuring peoples ability to forego reward. There appears to be a genetic component.

This is a bit harsh I hope " its just recently it's becoming so not having a good education is a life sentence of menial dead end jobs" I certainly try to support programs that facilitate people furthering their education and 'catching up' as it were. I've heard great things about programs like Homeboy Industries [1] which try to give people a chance to take a different road.

[1] http://homeboy-industries.org/index.php/about-us

[rdouble]

The fact that you are located in the Bay Area is why only 20% of the students are problematic in school. In the rural area I grew up in, it was more like 80% of the students.

[dbingham]

This stems at least partly from a culture which disparages knowledge and education. And the people promoting that culture are often the very same people promoting a free market approach to education.

[superuser2]

What would be the advantages and disadvantages of making school available to those who want it, and denying both school and welfare eligibility to those who don't?

(A GED could still "reverse" bad decisions from teenage years.)

People don't want to give up on these students, but it doesn't seem we have much to lose.

[Ryanmf]

I spent my adolescent life in private, Catholic schools in Southern California in the 90's and 00's. The percentage of kids choosing not to get an education there was at least as high (obviously we're both speculating a bit here).

That wasn't really the problem. The problem is that they got away with it. Not only were a significant number of my peers doing everything in their power to avoid as much schooling as possible, they also intentionally did so in ways that would exact the lowest penalties on their GPAs, allowing them to repeat the cycle at one of America's "fine" universities.

As an aside, in India and Brazil and other countries that are likely going to eat our lunch in the coming decades, kids act out in exactly the same ways. They did when you were in school, too, Chuck. And in India, and in Brazil, and probably when you were in Primary/Elementary school here in America, the teachers are/were allowed to beat the shit out of the students for doing so. And they still did it. The problem isn't 15-year-olds not having a complete mastery of self-discipline. The problem is a total lack of accountability which spans our entire American/Western culture.

I'm actually baffled that any intelligent person gives any credence to undergraduate degrees from American universities at this point. Anyone who can manage to take out 50-200k in loans and is sufficiently advanced in the Art of Bullshit gets a college degree in the good ol' USA. Anyone. "Didn't study in high school?" asks Santa Clara. "SAT scores not so hot?" inquires UCLA. Just go to a JC/CC for a while, and make sure to come on back and pay us whenever you're ready. We'll wait.

I see you're a USC grad, yourself. I would tell you about all the people I know who went to USC, that while some are very hard working folks and doing interesting, good work with their lives, many others are spoiled rotten rich kids (the types whose adjusted SAT scores were whatever they got plus whatever Daddy donated) entitled to a 3 day school week and at least as many hours spent playing beer pong as reading, with an unalienable right to a cushy gig "working" for one of Daddy's friends whenever they manage to get through their 4/5/6 year communications or sociology degree. Or athletes—at least most of them have some appreciation for hard work and discipline—many of whom would be better suited literally anywhere on earth but an "institution of higher education." And of course there are the cute blonde girls who had their tits done at 17 and are looking to hook up with and milk a proposal out of one of the aforementioned. I would tell you, but I don't need to. All those people went to USC when you were there, too.

This is getting long. To sum up:

The following words will mark the headstone of the Great Champion America we all think we're a part of, but in reality hasn't existed in quite some time: "A better life for my children."

In the aftermath of World Wars I and II, since our emergence as (temporarily) the world's only military and economic superpower, and the eventual disappearance of the word "manufacturing" from that very same list, America has produced nothing quite so consequential as several generations of the most entitled, work-averse sons-of-bitches ever to walk the planet earth.

…so now we're fucked.

[gaius]

Here in the UK the yout' say they want "opportunity". Well Opportunity #1 is "education" and they ain't interested in that.