MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Seriousness US/Europe Cultural Divide -- Musings

nekokami · 04-13-2009, 02:01 PM

I am hesitant to get into this topic, but things have been civil for 4 pages, now, so I'll dip in a toe.

The most effective predictor of academic success in the US is socio-economic status, i.e. the financial status of the family of the student. This is a very uncomfortable fact for American educational researchers. The proposed explanations vary from nutritional support (which affects brain development at an early age) to lack of safe environments in which to study to working-class parents not having enough time to read to their young children (the second most significant predictor of academic success). People will toss around ideas about cultural values of different groups in the US, too. I don't think the explanation is simple, and research has not supported any single explanation so far.

But the implication is that people don't really get an equal start here in the U.S., and although we certainly have "rags to riches" stories about people who made it big despite humble beginnings, if we look at the statistics, the children of the poor tend to remain poor (or get poorer).

Let us hypothesize that an education of equal quality for all children could minimize this difference between the starting points of individuals, to somehow create a perfect meritocracy (or at least a closer approximation of it). What I often hear people say is that they don't want to have to pay for the education of other people's children. They want the best for their own children, to make them "able to compete," and though they rarely say so out loud, one gets the sense that if the "other" children don't have as many educational opportunities, so much the better for the kids lucky enough to be born into "good" families.

I don't feel comfortable with this social setup, but I don't have the answers, either. To me, this seems like the sort of thing government exists to deal with. But I expect others will feel differently.

04-13-2009, 02:01 PM	#60
nekokami fruminous edugeek Posts: 6,745 Karma: 551260 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Northeast US Device: iPad, eBw 1150	I am hesitant to get into this topic, but things have been civil for 4 pages, now, so I'll dip in a toe. The most effective predictor of academic success in the US is socio-economic status, i.e. the financial status of the family of the student. This is a very uncomfortable fact for American educational researchers. The proposed explanations vary from nutritional support (which affects brain development at an early age) to lack of safe environments in which to study to working-class parents not having enough time to read to their young children (the second most significant predictor of academic success). People will toss around ideas about cultural values of different groups in the US, too. I don't think the explanation is simple, and research has not supported any single explanation so far. But the implication is that people don't really get an equal start here in the U.S., and although we certainly have "rags to riches" stories about people who made it big despite humble beginnings, if we look at the statistics, the children of the poor tend to remain poor (or get poorer). Let us hypothesize that an education of equal quality for all children could minimize this difference between the starting points of individuals, to somehow create a perfect meritocracy (or at least a closer approximation of it). What I often hear people say is that they don't want to have to pay for the education of other people's children. They want the best for their own children, to make them "able to compete," and though they rarely say so out loud, one gets the sense that if the "other" children don't have as many educational opportunities, so much the better for the kids lucky enough to be born into "good" families. I don't feel comfortable with this social setup, but I don't have the answers, either. To me, this seems like the sort of thing government exists to deal with. But I expect others will feel differently.