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ThinkOfTheChildren comments on Problems in Education - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (318)
If I hadn't recently seen that "students fighting segregated prom" story from credible news sources, I'd have considered this part of the story to be nearly conclusive evidence of trolling. I should be more charitable than that.
It's still evidence, though. Who could fail to anticipate the devastatingly bad PR from "iPods vs Makeover/mani/pedis"? For that matter, why didn't the devastatingly bad PR occur? Surely the students and their parents weren't under NDA too.
Yet a Google search for 'ipod makeover school -"chic school girls"' doesn't seem to find anything relevant, with or without outraged commentary attached. This random lesswrong page comes up for me in the first couple dozen hits, even on a browser with no Google login or cookies that might trigger personalized rankings.
Nobody ever felt it was worth blogging about how their kids were being given these prizes at school?
The only people aware that the project happened, as far as I know, are myself, my boss, the man in charge, and the 56 students (who were in 6-8th grade at the time, and all from poor black families). The issuer of the grant was the local government, and they issue so many grants that I seriously doubt there's anyone looking at all of them.
If a student with poor parents in that age group get's a free iPod, his peer and parents are likely to notice.
The idea that you can give a school a grant worth $800,000 and only one adult in the school knowing about the grant also seems strange.
If a lot of the student got the second iPod makeover, and iPod touches were more expensive at the time the whole thing might have cost $20000. That means $780,000 just disappeared. If that kind of money disappears people are bound to be interested.