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Another corollary to this is looking at PISA scores by race. I frequently see people on both the left and the right complain that the results of the American education system aren't very good, when the reality is that Asian and white Americans are doing great relative to comparable nations while black Americans are "only" doing about as well as Greeks and Chileans. Perhaps we do spend too much on education, but we actually do have an education system that produces what I would consider to be pretty good results.
I suppose I don't know what to do with that as a conclusion that will be compelling to anyone. It's not like the large, underperforming demographics that weigh down life expectancy and educational results aren't real or don't deserve the best education and medicine that can reasonably be provisioned by a society. It's just that I think they're pretty much already getting those and the results are what they are. For people on the left side of things, they're not going to find it even slightly compelling to reply, "hey, our systems aren't so bad, we just have a large underclass that doesn't really get educated and dies from violence, drugs, and obesity". I guess all I really want out of pointing it out is making sure we're actually having the conversation from the same starting point. If someone think it's bad, actually, that Americans die young, we can talk about that. But if they think the medical system just doesn't work, they're wrong.
Are they? If that is the case, why do people even in this forum always claim that high school cannot be expected to teach people anything and that's why it is absolutely necessary for colleges / universities to teach liberal arts to vast amount of people?
US highschools usually don't teach Latin, or philosophy, or formal logic, or most of the other things that you need to have a balanced liberal arts education. Of course you can teach yourself these things on youtube, but most people won't.
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