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I think this group potentially represents a very large percentage of kids. I think this group represents a large amount of adults currently "stuck" in their situations, now.

For #1, I think the education system has failed these kids in a very significant manner. Again, I think a large amount of people that feel there is no way out of labor jobs (and no this is not a slight against labor or a propping up of similar dead end jobs in offices but if you think everyone vocation jobs are content with what options their educational circumstances have given them, I think you may be delusional).

As for #2.1, I never claimed that at all. I do not claim that students should not be able to have separate sections to allow more advanced students to move at a brisk pace. I simply claim we should not throw the other kids out of the academic track and into a vocational track; this is a completely different issue. One point is about pace and the other is about not being on the track at all.

As for the last point, we're not talking about deep analyses of Kant and Hegel or quantum physics here. We are talking about high school, if I remember correctly. Many kids are miserable in high schools because of factors much different from being forced to read Animal Farm or having to factor quadratic equations. Further, if you don't think there are clear skews toward vocational tracks from particular socioeconomic classes or you think that is just so happens that those kids from those classes are exactly those that should be in vocational tracks then I don't think you really understand the matter at all.

I think it is interesting on HN when we see views about how "everyone should learn to program" or things like "we need to prepare for knowledge based economy and citizenry" or "labor jobs will be replaced by robots" we get one common theme of views but when this issue of splitting tweens and teens into educational tracks that will affect the rest of their lives we get this popular divergent view as the norm; seems like a very interesting "contradiction."




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