> Japan and Singapore aren’t Nordic social welfare states. They invested heavily in development but not particularly targeted at the poor.
Nor are they comparable to American inner cities.
My own anecdote about Singapore is an old friend who grew up very poor in Singapore (themself a child of impoverished rural immigrants laborers from India), but whose family received subsidized housing, transportation, and most of all, stability and security. If their family had arrived in Singapore as slaves, their outcome might have differed.
> Only if you pretend that white people in Appalachia are the same group as white people in Massachusetts.
Who is pretending that? Not me. I agree that they also have born the brunt of disinvestment and de-industrialization, and we are seeing the effects of that in the opioid and methamphetamine epidemics in those areas. It's interesting that we don't usually call it a culture problem with them though, like we do with black inner city communities facing similar challenges.
> That indicates that America’s problem is culture, not the availability of school psychologists.
It indicates a problem of economics and disinvestment. The psychologists are only there to manage the impacts of that disinvestment on society, not solve the original problem of lack of economic opportunity.
I'm also happy to reduce the number of school psychologists when teachers no longer have to deal with traumatized children disrupting and endangering their classes. Until then someone has to manage those issues, and as you stated, that's what we expect public schools to do.
Nor are they comparable to American inner cities.
My own anecdote about Singapore is an old friend who grew up very poor in Singapore (themself a child of impoverished rural immigrants laborers from India), but whose family received subsidized housing, transportation, and most of all, stability and security. If their family had arrived in Singapore as slaves, their outcome might have differed.
> Only if you pretend that white people in Appalachia are the same group as white people in Massachusetts.
Who is pretending that? Not me. I agree that they also have born the brunt of disinvestment and de-industrialization, and we are seeing the effects of that in the opioid and methamphetamine epidemics in those areas. It's interesting that we don't usually call it a culture problem with them though, like we do with black inner city communities facing similar challenges.
> That indicates that America’s problem is culture, not the availability of school psychologists.
It indicates a problem of economics and disinvestment. The psychologists are only there to manage the impacts of that disinvestment on society, not solve the original problem of lack of economic opportunity.
I'm also happy to reduce the number of school psychologists when teachers no longer have to deal with traumatized children disrupting and endangering their classes. Until then someone has to manage those issues, and as you stated, that's what we expect public schools to do.