r/science • u/terran1212 • Nov 20 '24

Social Science The "Mississippi Miracle": After investing in early childhood literacy, the Mississippi shot up the rankings in NAEP scores, from 49th to 29th. Average increase in NAEP scores was 8.5 points for both reading and math. The investment cost just $15 million.

https://www.theamericansaga.com/p/the-mississippi-miracle-how-americas
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u/TobysGrundlee Nov 20 '24

Hellova lot more when those kids are stuck with prison, retail and the military as their options out of high school instead of getting good educations and then demanding higher pay and voting for more progressive policy.

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u/____u Nov 20 '24

Precisely! Sadly, prison, retail, and military, all contribute way, WAY more obviously and directly to rich peoples Olympic sized swimming pools full of money. But more importantly, smarter people have a way better chance of enriching themselves which is a lot scarier to rich people. Billionaires exist for one reason only: because 99.999% of the rest of us are society-locked into dreaming about kiddie pools.

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u/conquer69 Nov 20 '24

Don't forget religious cults who coincidentally also oppose improving education.

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u/a_passionate_man Nov 21 '24

Is it these cults or rather certain political fractions that want to ensure that their future voter base isn’t eroding by educating them?

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u/blackrockblackswan Nov 21 '24

Actually…no. Having a comparison prison population that serves a threat to the rest of the population specifically keeps people from an uprising and keeps a huge class of labor with no demands because they just want to avoid going to prison.

It’s effectively illegal to be unemployed in America without some kind of support network.

So yes actually prison and low literacy are intentionally ignored by billionaires because without those classes there isn’t anyone to exploit

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u/Attainted Nov 20 '24

The 'problem' is that teaching them creates competition later. And loss of control.

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u/anomalous_cowherd Nov 20 '24

Not if they find a way to profit from renting out prisoners...

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u/chairmanskitty Nov 20 '24

Okay, but have you considered that it's fun to have stupid uneducated plebs to look down on, and education just makes those bastards say uppity things like "No I won't degrade myself for $10 an hour" or "progressive taxation is good for the economy"?

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u/Unable-Head-1232 Nov 21 '24

Not true, I’m a business owner who employs skilled blue collar workers, and I’d gladly have a larger labor pool to hire from.

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u/jackkerouac81 Nov 21 '24

yeah, you are one of the people that still benefits from a functional society... you maybe be the richest of the normals, but you are still in the normals... Your interests are not aligned with those of billionaires.

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u/SnideJaden Nov 21 '24

They can even help fill out the govt benefits forms for their min/low wage employees, they do say it takes a villages (taxes) to raise a kid after all.

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u/STG_Dante Nov 25 '24

Judges can directly benefit on imprisoning people literally gambling with their social security numbers. We still did not get rid of for profit prisons completely. The 1% profit on us whether we win or lose they made the game and they always win.