Looking at the world, it seems we all go through similar systemic issues. Naturally, in East Asian cultures where the fervor for education is overheated, this phenomenon tended to manifest much earlier.
When specific exams are abolished or watered down under the banner of 'diversity and equal opportunity,' the wealthy actually gain a massive advantage. Of course, the exam system itself inherently favors the rich as well.
The reason is simple: weakening exams naturally forces the strengthening of alternative metrics. During the transition period when a new system is introduced to society, wealthy parents are far better equipped to adapt than poorer ones.
Korea’s 'Spoon Class Theory' (where rich parents are gold spoons and poor parents are dirt spoons) and Japan’s 'Parent Gacha' (parent lottery) stem from this exact dynamic.
Sure, standardized testing benefits the wealthy because they can hire top-tier tutors. However, when the rules of the system change entirely, the underprivileged simply do not have the buffer or resources to keep up with the shift.
I agree. The rich kids will always have an advantage. But let me ask why are we playing this like a zero sum game? Do we not have enough education for anyone who is willing to put up the work?
We do have tons of education resources available nation wide. Over here in NYC, we have the highest per-capita spending on students with some of the worse outcome rates in the country. The biggest problem nobody wants to address is parental involvement.
Parents who want their kids to learn and excel will get their kids to learn and excel. Be it through their own involvement with classwork or actively hunting out better education opportunities. _Money_ helps but it isn't the end-all solution.
Meanwhile, if you have parents who treat schools as day care and do jackshit to be involved in their kids education. Well, those are the failing students you get.
Shit, I'll add as a child of two eastern european immigrants. My parents both worked 2 jobs each for years while I was in public school here in the US, they immigrated with basically nothing to their name and hard labor jobs. And they would still make time to help me with homework.
The ideal of education is holistic growth, but functionally, it's a positional good. An Ivy League, MIT, or UC Berkeley degree is valuable precisely because others do not have it, not simply because you do.
Add to this the fact that global productivity is maxed out, yet access to the tools of production remains highly restricted. This is the core issue. If the number of good jobs is fixed, hiring is a zero-sum game.
When education becomes universally accessible, we don't get equality; we just get higher hurdles. Just look at the dev industry. It used to be that knowing a local CMS was enough to get a job. Now, you are forced to grind leetcode and memorize the deep architecture of tech stacks you'll never actually use just to pass the filtering process.
I don't think there's any real solution to this inequality. It's a reality, and any attempt to 'solve' it is bound to fail
So your post got flagged, and I wonder what was controversial about it.
Wouldn't you agree that this zero-sum quality ultimately stems from increasing wealth inequality?
While scarcity is a reality indeed, more egalitarian societies, where life can be satisfactory whether you've studied with billionaire kids or in your town's vocational college, the issue is much lesser.
I'd argue measures that reduce wealth inequality would be the solution.
I'm from Korea, and people often flag my comments as 'GEN AI' I really don't care about the reports. It just happens because non-native speakers tend to rely on the same formal dictionary words that LLMs use. Regardless of that, here is my take: the extreme widening of wealth inequality is a serious systemic issue
I wonder if there will come a time where being conservative is seen as being on the side of the working class, the poor, and the disadvantaged, because inequality is so far gone that any change to the system is too likely to be exploited by the ruling class/the rich and make things worse.
When specific exams are abolished or watered down under the banner of 'diversity and equal opportunity,' the wealthy actually gain a massive advantage. Of course, the exam system itself inherently favors the rich as well.
The reason is simple: weakening exams naturally forces the strengthening of alternative metrics. During the transition period when a new system is introduced to society, wealthy parents are far better equipped to adapt than poorer ones.
Korea’s 'Spoon Class Theory' (where rich parents are gold spoons and poor parents are dirt spoons) and Japan’s 'Parent Gacha' (parent lottery) stem from this exact dynamic.
Sure, standardized testing benefits the wealthy because they can hire top-tier tutors. However, when the rules of the system change entirely, the underprivileged simply do not have the buffer or resources to keep up with the shift.