**** Elections thread *****

[CoccoBill]

wait, which is it? If Finland doesn't emphasize testing, and testing is how you gauge performance objectively, then how do you know if they're doing well? If you're putting ALL your stock in this PISA test, I think you're being a little glib. It's really not as simple and 'standardized' as you might think.

When the first PISA rankings came out in 2000 or so putting Finns at the top, the first reaction by Finns was that wait a minute, there's gotta be an error here. There hadn't been any emphasis on testing in education, and the success came as a complete surprise. It was just an unintentional outcome, and in its way showed that maybe something had been done right.

And others say it's great. Again, Income "mobility" is the key, in my opinion. Of the poorest 20% in the US, nearly 2/3 of that population advances to a higher quintile within a generation. If that were impossible, then income inequality is bad. If there is robust income mobility, then the people on the bottom are there because they've chosen to be shitty people.

Well I guess I'll just have to take your word over the experts'.

I'm not sure what your point is. Mine was that the hardest schools show the best test results. I'm not sure volume of homework and tests translates directly to 'difficulty'.

Correlation doesth not causation imply.

Sounds kinda snarky. Maybe you're misunderstanding me. I'm not saying that Finlands schools are bad. And I'm not saying that US's are good. I am saying that they seem to have entirely different goals when it comes to educating kids, hence a standardized test result is not a great basis for comparison. Plus, as I said, the test doesn't seem to be as "standardized" as one may think.

Then it seems like we agree. All I pointed out that there's evidence that not "all public schools systems are bad".

The bolded is quite an exaggeration. McDonalds dominates Burger King. Coke dominates Pepsi. I'm not sure Nokia had that big of an advantage over Motorola, Samsung, LG, and whoever else. Nokia had a nice run....that's it.

Up until 2008 Nokia had an over 40% market share, the next up was Blackberry with under 20%. This was when iPhone was already out and Nokia in decline. I'd call that domination.

Millions of them. Literally millions of them.

That, by definition, makes absolutely no sense. Name one that's even in top 100, and we can laugh at your idea of great.

What? Are you kididing me right now? Isn't that the whole point of this argument....that Finland has so many kids acheiving at rates higher than the worldwide average? If Finland had an even distribution of below, average, and above average kids, then they would be in the middle of the pack in the world rankings. But they're not....they're at the top.

Man I hate explaining jokes.

You're assuming that only money motivates people, and even to the extent that if your monetary advantage for succeeding in your country is smaller than it might be in some other country, no one's gonna bother. That's wrong on so many levels that I can't even begin to dissect it.

[BananaStand]

Well I guess I'll just have to take your word over the experts'.

What "experts"? Are you suggesting that there is a definitive right/wrong determination on whether income inequality is a good thing or a bad things? Because there isn't. There's substantial debate supporting both sides. My personal preference, is to have income inequality along with income mobility. If there is no mobility, then inequality sucks. But if there is mobility, and you're not happy with you're income, you can do something about it. That's awesome.

That, by definition, makes absolutely no sense. Name one that's even in top 100, and we can laugh at your idea of great.

Top 100 what? Are you saying that something as subjective as intelligence has been definitively ranked down to a list of the top 100 out of every human ever? If you're trying to suggest that there is no correlation between academic aptitude and lifetime earnings....you're out of your mind.

You're assuming that only money motivates people, and even to the extent that if your monetary advantage for succeeding in your country is smaller than it might be in some other country, no one's gonna bother. That's wrong on so many levels that I can't even begin to dissect it.

of course people are motivated by more than money. But to say that money isn't firmly planted at or near the top of the list is absurd. If you're born into the bottom income bracket in a given country, you can make 10x more money by moving to the top. In another country with less income inequality, the increase from bottom to top is only 5x. If you're a bright motivated individual....where would you rather live? Does it really make a difference to you if schools in the 5x country have better test scores than the 10x country?

Do you want a better paycheck? or do you wanna be just a little bit better at high school algebra than everyone else?