[unono]

The root cause of poverty is the incompetent government education system - The Teacher's Union. Most public school teachers I've come across have contempt for the businessmen (people who create the wealth) and for poor people (teachers tend to be limousine liberals).

The first country or state to disband the current teaching system and replace with a competitive system will skyrocket to success. This is a no-brainer, but it's so to difficult implement because there's so many of the 'government handout' teachers voting they swamp the rest of us.

[reverius42]

I would think in order to qualify as a "limousine liberal", you'd have to be able to afford a limousine.

I think you'd more likely see a teacher driving one, to supplement their income.

[unono]

Boo-hoo, teachers, who cannot clearly demonstrate how they actually add economic value to anything, want to be paid even more than their current $52,000 median salary.

Meanwhile, fisherman, who hold the most dangerous job, have a median salary of $25,000.

Firefighters, whose job is to enter dangerous buildings, $45,000.

Fast food workers, $18,000.

[theorique]

You seriously don't see any economic value associated with the education of a child from age 6-18?

We can argue about what specific subjects are best to teach in school, and what a teacher ought to be paid, but don't you think that, broadly speaking, educating children provides some economic benefit to a nation?

[unono]

Child care workers who watch children when parents aren't present make $19,000, that's maybe more appropriate. http://www.bls.gov/ooh/personal-care-and-service/childcare-w...

Where are the proper studies (with 1000s of participants) showing teachers can do a better job than babysitters who hand out an ipad with learning software to every student?

The teaching system is a 19th system. It's like if the tech industry continued on with using telegraphs and morse code for everything.

[theorique]

I think education is definitely ripe for disruption.

There's a lot of "but it's always been done that way", and teachers' unions are very quick to play the "think of the chilllllldrun card". Lots of entrenched bureaucracy and budgets that people don't want to lose.

[poppysan]

Wow... The root cause of poverty is incompetent education? What about the college educated poor? What about the failure of the voucher program in Milwaukee?

Why are public schools with the same "limousine liberals" operating them more successful than poor schools? I think your theory has a few holes.

[unono]

What are the successes. Are they successful in taking children from the socioeconomic group and turning them into high earning 30 year old adults?

Teaching metrics should be about how successful people turn out as adults, not some test scores at year end.

Until the government education system can show it's success in that, I'd hold off funding them.

What has shown success are private schools http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230382220457746...

[superuser2]

The root of all poverty is that children aren't taught to worship the businessmen who choose to value their time at "as little as the government allows" and avoid employing them and their parents at all if possible. What?

[unono]

The root cause is that the teaching system doesn't turn all children into businessmen.

If everyone was a businessman, they'd be earning more than government set minimums.

[superuser2]

You can't be a successful businessman without 1) having or making something that people value (which requires skill, capital, or some of both) and 2) taking risks with your time and money instead of earning low but guaranteed income. If you don't have skills, capital, or the cash to survive when your gamble doesn't pay off (just like it usually doesn't pay off in Silicon Valley), you don't get to be a businessman. Teaching a child from a low-income family how to run a business is stupid unless you are also prepared to make a brain-dead investment in a kid with a shitty high school diploma and zero professional experience outside of a Walmart.

I have a laptop and I've had the luxury of time to learn to program. If I invest 1,000 hours in a web startup that fails, I still get to eat food from a grocery store and sleep on a bed.

As a young adult in a family living paycheck-to-paycheck (because they are paid barely enough to survive) you are not likely to have free time to develop skills - you need to be working to cover the cost of your meals, taking care of young children, etc. You don't stand a chance.

But let's say you had some free time, and you went to the (evil socialist government waste-of-taxpayer-money) public library and taught yourself some Rails and spent enough time on the Internet to get an idea of something people wanted. Already we're talking pretty implausible, but let's go with it. High school ends, and you want to dive into building this thing. But guess what? You need to eat. So you take a shitty minimum wage job and come home exhausted every day; your body physically will not let you concentrate no matter how hard you try. Game over.

You have a shitty education and no GitHub portfolio. There is absolutely no reason for a venture capitalist to believe in you, you're just another delusional starry-eyed kid who has no idea how much he doesn't know. But let's say your parents have faith, and they're willing to continue eating the cost of your room and board in their apartment because they just know you're going to make it big like Mark Zuckerberg and will be able to take care of them. You work 100 hours a week on your idea for 6 months, but it fails. It was a good idea but it turned out there wasn't a market for it, or you screwed up because you've never done this before, or you got eaten alive by competition staffed with Stanford comp sci graduates. Not only is the game over, but you've betrayed your parents, you're getting evicted, your siblings are being placed in foster care, and you're homeless.

It was pretty irresponsible of your parents to let you do that. Which is probably why "keep your head down, work hard, take what you get, and recognize ambition as sinful" makes sense to people as a religious value.

Taking risks with your time is a luxury which you absolutely do not have when you're living on the edge of not making rent. Capitalism does not allow for everyone to be an owner - the whole point is that the ability to make money resides in the hands of people with money as opposed to the collective.

[unono]

The government spends about $10,000 per year per child on public education.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/06/21/155515613/how-much...

That's $120,000 over k-12 (not including pre-school). Is $120,000 and 12 years not enough to teach every kid entrepreneurship and coding?

As I wrote in another comment, the current education system is 19th century stuff and it's amazing a lot more people aren't astounded why it still exists.

[superuser2]

There is not demand for an infinite number of web programmers or web startups. Teaching every child to program just drives down the value of programming skills.

You have not solved the risk or capital problems.

Yes, there are a lot of problems with the education system. Wake me when you find a way to fix it that actually works in a sustainable and scalable fashion.

Punishing teachers for teaching students who don't give a shit because there is no good reason for them to give a shit just decreases the number of teachers willing to work in poor districts.

[unono]

We wouldn't be punishing teachers, just get ridding of a system that doesn't work. Salman Khan has a proposed a better one where schools are essentially libraries/babysitters that any child can go in and learn a self-directed curriculum.

There is an 'unlimited demand' for programmers skills because of demand ran out, there would be no work left (we'd have a singularity/post scarcity) - programmers automate work.

[woofyman]

Yes, only businessmen add value to society.