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Re:Parents in poorer countries devote more time to their kid... by lumberjack on Friday April 20, 2018 @05:52AM (#16883481)
The reason for this is pretty simple: you get free public education in these poor countries, but only if you pass the entrance examinations.

For a lot of families this is the only way for their kids to get out of poverty. Moreover because of the way the school system is structured, your kid could easily fall behind at age 7 and never recover. The reason for this is because of stratified classes, where they group kids into classes, by their performance on yearly examinations.

So there is simply much more incentive for families in poor countries to put more effort into homework, which BTW, is nothing like the homework that American kids get.

It is nonsensical to try to compare what parents in India and parents in Finland are doing.

Re:Parents in poorer countries devote more time to their kid... by bunderbunder on Friday April 20, 2018 @10:02AM (#16884826)
> For a lot of families this is the only way for their kids to get out of poverty.

By contrast, in countries that have been industrialized for over a century, the preceding several generations found that they could relatively easily find low- to moderate-skill factory jobs that secured a reasonably prosperous lifestyle.

There are also industrialized countries with stratified school systems, and I see that some of them fall toward the bottom of the graph.

Re:Parents in poorer countries devote more time to their kid... by 1k on Friday April 20, 2018 @08:27AM (#16884181)
Yes, this exactly. Your kids’ education is the way out of poverty. In some families, one child with a decent job will provide a lifeline for the whole family.

Even if the system is broken, even if the quality of education is bad, you have to play along because private education is too expensive.