[billdueber]

Reminder to everyone commenting here: you are not an average student. The hard part of teaching is not coming up with dynamite lessons for kids who are smart and want to learn and are capable of doing so and aren’t hungry. Anyone can do that. Well, almost anyone.

Way back in the olden times, 5 to 10% of people went to school, and it worked really well for them. Now everyone goes to school, and it works really well for about 5% of us.

[paulcole]

I promise you, this site is not as special as you think it is.

The majority of people here are incredibly average (like me!), just fortunate to be born at the right time, be exposed to technology at the right time, get a few other lucky breaks, and of course put some work in.

It’s super easy to convince yourself that because you’re successful you must be special. Remember that people tend to ascribe their successes to themselves and their failures to someone else.

[reducesuffering]

You would be average if you actually thought this site doesn't have a selection bias out of the world population. If you think HN averages out to a middle of the pack student, people who spend their free time reading text, you have quite the social bubble around you. There's also like 25 $1b+ founder/ceo's out of 50k.

[paulcole]

Believe it or not the world has a lot of people who are above average whose lives don’t revolve around computers. There’s just as many losers here as anywhere.

[reducesuffering]

First part, of course, but since HN is only like 50k that doesn’t say much about HN.

Second part, there can forsure be many “losers” here but it’s quite ignorant to think there’s the same percentage struggling in math classes as the general population. Think about it. If you took 100 HN’ers where do you think they skew on succeeding on math tests or even taking classes like Calculus compared to gen pop? The average person even in the US doesn’t have a Bachelors degree. Do you think that applies to HN? Or that it’s not correlative with educational success?

[paulcole]

I never said anything about calculus or math.

I said that HN is mostly average students and I haven’t heard anything that changes my mind, regardless of whether you think a lot of people here are good at calculus. How do you think HN readers fared in art/literature/English classes?

[reducesuffering]

Pretty fucking good, actually. That's why we're here writing copious amounts of text, more Bachelor's (a big general education) than average, reading articles, and upvoting ACX posts, someone who was top of the top in English class writing competency.

[xboxnolifes]

Even if you believe you have average intelligence, it's without doubt that there are many more students in school with lower motivation. To the point that getting them to write a paragraph is like pulling teeth. The difference between the students in the AP classes when I was in high school and the students in the A or B level classes was night and day in terms of just paying attention or being able to give any answer to a question.

There's only so much you can do to make a subject interesting when the students care so little about their education. It starts at a young age and just compounds. By the time you see them as students in high school, they're already years behind in motivation and education.

[chrisdhoover]

My grades said otherwise