Posters who say they want all children to have an equal chance in life

[GeneralPeter]

Do you actually mean equal, or do you mean you want a decent minimum standard for all children (perhaps a very high minimum), plus good avenues for social mobility?

I believe in the above (not strict equality), and I'm always curious whether that's what others mean too when they say "equal" on these boards.

It’s impossible for children to have equal opportunity and it is not about money, it is about the parents, their skills, their ability to parent, their desire to do so.

you will always have loving, encouraging parents who are hands on raising their kids and availing them of all opportunity and you will always have parents who will drink the child benefit or spend it on themselves and give no shit.

no one needs to take a test before they conceive. And as everyone is free to conceive, then you can never ever have it equal for kids. Ever.

By far the biggest influence on a child's life is their parents or caregivers. Some parents are loving, kind, engaged and encouraging. Others are short tempered, angry and disengaged.

How can this be addressed by the state?

Spot on. And unless you ban private tutoring children won’t be receiving the same level of education anyway. I was just saying in another thread parental engagement or lack thereof and lack of aspirations is a major issue.

Signed, former educator and support worker

ETA: The smarter kids from my state primary with parents who valued education and career and had more stability etc overall thrived in high school and beyond compared to the equally smart kids who came from families which lacked ambition, weren’t engaged in education etc. they didn’t even need to be particularly chaotic it was just a lack of aspirations for their children and an inability to see education or career as important.

Given one of the biggest factors in achievement is socioeconomic, are we really saying that richer parents are kinder, more loving and more engaged? Really?

100% equality of opportunity is (of course) a pipe dream. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to offer every child (and adult) the best possible chance in life.

I'm not sure that's true, but one example is
Surestart, which made measurable impacts.

Yes. This, and genes, and being born in the right place and time. None of that can be managed by the state. That's why I think equality (even of opportunity) is a bad goal.

However there is a lot that the state can do. Excellent teaching and schools for all, serving children of all types well, good maternity support and childhood health interventions, protections against childhood poverty (eg free school meals), a well-functioning police and justice system to reduce violence and predation, addition services, and good exposure to different life possibilities, and a lot more house building and abolishing SDLT to reduce the need for inherited wealth to have good housing, ease geographical mobility. You won't get equality of opportunity even then (and shouldn't try), and some kids will still come out badly, but hopefully far fewer. Society as a whole benefits as we benefit from more of our collective talent.

Of course we have to strive for equality. But we can't crack the nut of how private choices are made. If people who aren't well equipped to be parents choose to have kids, those kids start life with a disadvantage it's almost impossible to pull back.

Teachers all agree that early reading to kids is vital, but that happens in private. The state can provide books through libraries, literacy schemes etc but it can't make parents read to their kids.

I have been reading that the evidence at secondary level, is your children's peer group and their parents/ your children's teachers are the biggest I fluency for xhildren, not their actual.parents

And the biggest indicator is not your parents income but the average of your post code. Children are influenced mostly by those outside the home in teenage years

Another massive impact is how many actual years a kindergarten teacher has been teaching. The more experience, the better, borne out by a study in the US. As they have more experience outside box ticking

But there are things we can do.

SureStart worked

Universal free schools meals boost attainment

Just because we can't 'fix' everything, it doesn't mean we should do nothing. Perfect is the enemy of good

The only area we as a society can give children equal opportunities is in education.

If every school was decent and could cater for the students specific to their area giving realistic support. I am thinking of schools that are able to support the academic students as well as the ones that are just not academic. From my experience, schools are far to focused on 6th form and A levels..... leading to university.
When in reality a high % are not academic or university material.
Where necessary have a after school/ homework club and free school meals & snacks to allow secondary school kids a safe space for learning with a full belly and the right support.

But this costs money and time, teachers are already overworked ...

Everything else is down to parents and their backgrounds. Their income and lifestyle. As the saying goes, you can lead the horses to the water but you can't make them drink.

There will always be a form of inequally, and a cretin stigma attached to whatever the opposite side is...

Another tricky problem is that over generations, the more social mobility there is, the more intractable the problems at the bottom. When only a tiny elite had education, there were millions of talented, capable, uneducated people, with the ability to do great things once social mobility permitted it. The more ladders there are, the more people make use of them, taking their good genes and attributes with them as they ascend, to pass on to their (now educated, privileged) progeny.

See also: assortive mating.

Absolutely it should be but it simply isn’t so these jobs are topped up with benefits

Absolutely agree.

@GeneralPeter the fact that they have been born gives them an equal opportunity for a start! everything else is down to the parents and the child as they grow up!

@allthemiddlechildrenoftheworld I'm not sure I agree (if I'm understanding you correctly. Apologies if I'm not).

Blank-slateism on the left and on the right is nonsense.

Right-wing version: up-by-bootstraps, anyone who doesn't thrive just didn't try hard enough, any resulting societal outcome is therefore fair.

Left-wing version: we're all equally talented, good, etc. Any societal outcome that shows difference between groups means something nefarious is happening. Anyone who succeeds too hard has probably cheated. Stigmatising it is justice.

Clearly, many versions of leftism and rightism exist that don't do the above. But blank-slateism is way too common on both sides for my liking.

Me: we're all different. Some are better (in whatever you want to measure, other than moral worth, and even that's debatable). Most of our strengths we didn't choose and don't get to claim virtue for. Our outcomes in life are mostly chance (it's incredibly unlikely to be born in a rich country in the present era, for a start). Build a society that recognises difference; incentivise and celebrate talent, success and effort, running with the grain of human nature; give value and dignity to many life paths, and protect the unluckiest, who could so easily have been us.

Right now I would just settle for being able to take my child to a swimming pool and for him to be able to access it, or to be able to take him to a park and find a piece of equipment he could play on in his wheelchair but these aspirations are only paid lip service.

@Ratfinkstinkypink at the city local to us is the best park with one those wheelchair swings. and local to us at out beach you can book one of those wheelchairs with wheels for the sand. kids love it/ also at the city local to us, the railway station has one of those changing places toilets.

@GeneralPeter I have seen many kids who cannot be arsed making the effort at school and their parents dont encourage them either so that is where the difference is!

Yes - lots of the social interventions we need are to make up for bad parenting. But while it's natural to say that lazy students/parents "deserve" what they get: a) that doesn't generally help society, nor the kids, b) at a deeper level, there is a large genetic component to our traits too, including diligence. There's points at which stigmatizing laziness is useful (if it effects useful change), but there's points at which it just doesn't serve any further purpose. It's why I think we need many paths. Some children thrive with a nurturing approach, some with structure and discipline, some want to compete and excel, others to explore their own paths. And in many different domains.

The challenge is how to deliver that at scale with practical policy. It's not easy at all and I'm not claiming I know how to do it (beyond the basics I mentioned in an earlier post).

@allthemiddlechildrenoftheworld some children are born after suffering the in-utero effects of poor nutrition, smoking, alcohol and drugs. Born into a home that’s smoke and mold filled, cold and damp, where cooking involves nothing of nutrition.
it’s not an equal start right from conception.

Yes I agree with this.

Cutting youth services was a false economy.

Brave new world.

I think you'd like communism 😁

Great idea, wrong species (E.O.Wilson, ant expert).