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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   27889 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025

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I've noticed this blue tribe insane striver culture, like white orientals. I feel bad for their children and strongly believe the striving doesn't actually do anything. But at the end of the day, it is the default response to a hyper-credentialist culture with overproduced elites(see also, oriental countries). I... don't actually know what we can do about it, other than to let the blue tribe shrivel up and die from the low fertility this produces.

strongly believe the striving doesn't actually do anything.

I'm reminded of Scott's old homeschooling post where, iirc, he proposes that in early childhood there's just an underlying brain maturity process that can't be meaningfully accelerated toward basic educational attainments, such that you could either spend every day from, say, age 5 to 7 strenuously trying to teach a kid how to read and do arithmetic before their brain is ready for it, or you could spend those years doing basically anything else and by the time they're 7 they'll pick up reading and arithmetic easily in a couple of weeks. (Some version of this has to be true -- you can't teach a baby to read).

I was "unschooled" through elementary age myself and I don't think I learned to read til I was 8, but when I did it barely required any instruction and I was reading at a college level by 12, possibly because I hadn't learned to resent the attempt.

So much of this striving for early acceleration is probably pushing rope, physiologically, putting in 10x the effort to get to (at best) the same result marginally faster.

I was about four and a half when I went to school (no such thing as kindergarten in my day) and I was able to read. Learned at home, can't even remember learning so I can't brag about "I was two (or three) when I learned to read". That wasn't a sign of me being particularly smart, it was (a) the result of freaky genes on the paternal family side where everyone is an early reader, for some unknown reason (possibly bound up with the strongly suspected but not formally diagnosed autism spectrum/Aspergers we got going on as well through the generations) and (b) my maternal grandmother lived with us and she did a lot of the childminding of infant me, and what is a bedbound old woman going to do with a two year old but start them on the alphabet etc.?

All that means that I have no idea what the optimum age for learning to read is, or what is the best method for teaching reading, but there's definitely a range between "will pick up reading anyhow be it late or early" and "need to be taught or will fall behind" where school is useful.

From the public school's perspective, the problem is that there are all these families where the parents don't read, and would like their kids to read better than they do, but don't necessarily do things like reading in front of their kids, making the whole thing much more difficult and tedious. And there are also kids with various processing differences, who have to be taught very concretely, but English is a bit odd phonetically, it takes up a lot of memory space, so they have to drill a lot.

My daughter just turned six, and has started spontaneously spelling things out loud. She'll say "that's good" and try to spell out the "g-o-o-d" part. I'll tell her the right spelling if necessary. This is not something I suggested, she seems to just want to do it, as a developmental thing. I remember being a teenager and was reading more than I was talking, so my internal monologue contained spelling and punctuation. But that's because my parents had a bunch of curated books in there house, and had designated quiet reading time because they actually wanted to read themselves, which a lot of kids don't have and the schools (not Alpha school, of course) are always trying and struggling to replicate that.

From the public school's perspective, the problem is that there are all these families where the parents don't read, and would like their kids to read better than they do, but don't necessarily do things like reading in front of their kids, making the whole thing much more difficult and tedious. And there are also kids with various processing differences, who have to be taught very concretely, but English is a bit odd phonetically, it takes up a lot of memory space, so they have to drill a lot

Oh gosh yes. Reading aloud fluently and easily, you need to practice that, and the best way in school still is "have everyone read out loud in class and take turns reading several paragraphs". If there's no reading at home, and no practice with books, that's hard to pick up (having said that, my parents never read bedtime stories to us, but my father used to tell us stories every night). You can only do so much in school, and if it's not happening at home, then what you get at school is even more vital.

If you read The Idea Factory with a somewhat critical eye you can easily see why Bell labs isn't happening now, and can't happen in the near future. Sure, some of their best guys went to MIT, but that was when you got into MIT by like taking a train there then passing an entrance exam. None of this extra-curricular and AP maxxing nonsense. But many of the main figures also just were like paperboys who were the small town genius and went to a random engineering school nearby. At some point, however, determining actual merit, talent, and skill became unfashionable for academics and hiring managers so they outsourced to boring metrics and racial adjustments.

Asian tiger parent culture is different due to bugman conformalism. They send their kids to extra lessons to get ahead in public school, the same one normal kids go to. Not this abomination that this parent is getting into.

Asian tiger parent culture is different due to bugman conformalism

I can’t parse this sentence. Asian culture is more conforming, so their children go to public instead of private schools? Weird tech-nerds are more non-conforming? I don’t know what bugmen are.

I don't know about all Asian countries, but, my wife grew up in China and had to cram and apply to get into a good public high school. Not going to high school or going into a less selective low ranked one were the alternatives.

I've seen 'bugmen' is a racist slur against Asians. But Bronze Age Pervert uses it in a non-racial sense as a slur against regular people. Asserting people you don't like are similar to bugs.

I'm not sure I have this right as I'm only going by impressions picked up online at third-hand, but there seems to be the reverse idea about Asian universities: what we would call the state ones are considered the high-value, high-class colleges you want your kids to get into (the equivalent of MIT and the Ivies), going to a private university is considered a step down (think "small liberal arts college in the middle of nowhere versus an Ivy League college").

So you grind grind grind to get into the right university to get the degree that will get you into the handful of 'acceptable' large business combines where you grind grind grind to get on the executive path or else you're just an 'office worker' which is a failure.

There is this notion of being an elite/belonging to the elite, and elite seems to mean "from a wealthy family, went to the right university, got into Big Corp and am on the executive promotion track".

Let the more informed correct me, please!

This is the case in germany as well for the most part, though it's as always more complicated. For the state universities, there are very few shortcuts, top degrees are kept highly selected & small, and it's free to boot - you just have to be good enough. The private universities, meanwhile, have the reputation that anyone can just buy their way in. It's gotten even harder for them since there's lots of new, easy-to-get degrees even in state universities nowadays. But most people know which are which, so they're only worth it if you can't get anything else.

All bugman references aside, I think the point is that Asian societies are more conformist, so everyone sends their children to the same (public) schools and then quietly to cram school out of sight.

Weird tech nerds are more likely to brag about sending their children to an experimental school, whereas in Japan this is kind of like saying ‘I’m an enemy of society and I don’t want my children to be brought up in the normal way’. There are special schools for diplomats’ children etc. but not enough to matter at scale.

You are not wildly off, but this is an exaggeration. There are many private schools at the secondary level in Japan. They cost more and in general may have a higher academic standard. Their accreditation is only relevant in terms of what they may prepare students to expect in the college entrance exam. In some cases these private high schools have International Baccalaureate programs, etc. As for university, the highest ranked schools are public (Tokyo, Kyoto, Kobe, etc.) But any kid from any high school, public or private, who can pass the entrance exam can get in. This, as you say, is the purpose of cram schools at the high school level.

Re: private schools, would I be right in saying that most of them are grandfathered in? Particularly thinking of the Catholic schools.

I... don't actually know what we can do about it, other than to let the blue tribe shrivel up and die from the low fertility this produces.

Considering this guy has three kids, this plan isn't panning out in this case.

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