[HN Gopher] My kid can't handle a virtual education, and neither...
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My kid can't handle a virtual education, and neither can I
Author : magnifique
Score : 149 points
Date : 2020-08-19 18:55 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| pyzon wrote:
| I can't help but feel that many of the dismissive comments here
| must be either from folks without kids, or from people that got
| lucky with a well-mannered child. You think those good manners
| were all your amazing parenting? You probably deserve some
| credit, but I think you also lucked out more than you realize.
| Haven't you seen parents with multiple kids and those kids have
| wildly different dispositions?
|
| I urge you to have more empathy with parents and kids. Kids
| handling remote learning badly is such a pervasive complaint
| right now that it defies logic that all of these parents are bad
| parents.
| icelancer wrote:
| Yep. There's variance. I have one kid who can crush online
| classes sporadically and do tons of heads-down work with
| minimal supervision and is just six years old.
|
| The other one is almost ten and is on ADHD medication, has
| borderline personality disorder issues, and while very
| intelligent, has problems with authority and can't focus online
| very well.
|
| There's a huge randomness factor that goes into everything,
| including having kids. It's not deterministic.
| james_s_tayler wrote:
| Ah... this. So much this.
| codingdave wrote:
| > Haven't you seen parents with multiple kids and those kids
| have wildly different dispositions?
|
| Agreed - I have three kids. One is going to her school in-
| person. Another sits on the couch on his laptop for 4 straight
| hours until he gets his work done, and refuses to take a break.
| The last one works in 20-30 minutes sessions, doing screen
| time, then taking a break.
|
| If I were to force any one of them to work like the others, it
| would go badly. Different people, different ways to work.
| actfrench wrote:
| In my opinion, the issue here isn't virtual learning (the what),
| the issue is how we are doing virtual learning (the how). We
| can't use zoom the way we use a physical classroom. It's a
| totally different medium. I teach a group of kindergarteners
| online every morning for 3 hours. The first thing we do is make
| sure their space is set up to allow for movement. They can jump
| up move, around, wiggle, whatever they want. I also take huge
| advantage of the screen share feature. If kids have a question
| about bugs, we look on youtube together for a great bug video.
| Every morning they get to pick a video on cosmic kids yoga, and
| then we do cosmic kids together. Considering she's the best kids
| yoga teacher in the world, we're taking advantage of the online
| medium to give them the best possible experience. When I read to
| them, I also screen share, so they can follow along (a much
| better way to get kids to read a long than in a classroom where I
| have to hold the book up.). Are there advantages to a physical
| classroom? Absolutely. Do we live in an age of technology? Yes,
| this is absolutely true. Let's learn to use these incredible
| tools well with our kids, rather than just dismissing them
| because they don't replicate the classroom experience.
| ativzzz wrote:
| It's great that you are a technology-savvy teacher who is
| capable of taking advantage of these tools. Unfortunately, a
| large number of teachers and school districts do not have the
| skills, resources, or leadership to support this kind of
| experience for their students and teachers.
|
| Most school districts would need
|
| 1. the desire to transform the way they teach
|
| 2. the leadership capable of driving this change
|
| 3. the teachers who are tech-savvy or capable of learning these
| technologies/skills (many aren't!)
| actfrench wrote:
| A lot of teachers tend to have really high emotional
| intelligence which makes them great caregivers, but may not
| have great tech skills. I'd love to see school districts
| provide more professional development to teachers in
| effective strategies using online teaching. I don't think
| this is even taught in teacher's college. But hopefully now
| with the world changing, this will change as well. I'd be
| happy to provide training to any teacher who wants tips on
| using technology to teach. The great news is a lot of
| teachers are really highly motivated to learn and really
| highly motivated to teach well so I am sure they would pick
| up these skills quickly given the opportunity.
|
| I knew virtually nothing about tech, but one day I got the
| idea 5 years ago for a tech startup that could help kids. I
| was forced to learn about technology to make it work and
| benefited from a lot of great mentors along the way.
|
| Even 5 years later, I have a sharp learning curve, but a lot
| of the parents in my group are engineers and have helped me
| come up with good activity ideas and technology ideas and
| been really patient with me as I learned to apply them.
|
| I bet a lot of people in this group could help their child's
| teacher. If you reach out, I bet your teacher would be really
| grateful and eager to learn too.
| actfrench wrote:
| This is how my class is structured and the activities we do.
| https://www.modulo.app/manishamodule
|
| Feel free to share with other teachers if it could benefit
| them. I"d also be happy to talk to your teacher or anyone
| else's teacher if they need support on making zoom more
| engaging. Also, if other teachers have ideas of activities that
| worked well for them, I'd love to hear!
|
| I'll just add that one thing that's been helpful in my group is
| to try to focus the zoom on social-emotional learning and then
| do an "independent study" together period where kids work on
| mastery-based learning apps independently, but with their
| friends and a teacher there if they get stuck (Math tango is
| our favorite!). I find kids learn a lot better with the apps
| then when I teach them a lesson verbally and give them a
| worksheet.
|
| Zoom represents a really interesting challenge for teachers,
| but there is a lot of gold to be found if you look!
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Zoom does not belong in any classroom, regardless of virtual
| or physical. It is proprietary software, which has a back
| track record on privacy and security. It is not free software
| respecting children's and teachers' rights and freedom.
|
| I find the this reliance on proprietary shitty software
| annoying and absurd. Often teachers barely know manage to
| cobble together virtual classrooms. They lack information
| about alternatives and support for setting things up
| properly.
| actfrench wrote:
| I tried a lot of different web conferencing apps and zoom
| was the only one that had good enough audio and visual to
| make it remotely possible to teach effectively. Google meet
| was a total disaster with a group of more than 5 kids. But,
| I was lucky to have parent in my group who were informed
| about options and could give me advice in getting going. I
| think it's great if teachers can take advantage of emerging
| and established technology if it helps them teach well.
| ghaff wrote:
| With respect to open source, there is Jitsi which I have
| seen exactly one person use for a small gathering. So shall
| we make things more difficult by requiring the use of open
| source (which I generally support)?
| sparrish wrote:
| This is usually the first mistake new homeschoolers make -
| trying to recreate the "school" experience in their homes. It
| nearly always fails.
|
| Homeschooling is much more flexible and dynamic. More breaks,
| more following the rabbit down the hole, more fun.
|
| My kids can often be found reading in their makeshift forts
| behind the sofa, watching ants in the backyard, and clicking
| through the youtube videos following the curiosity from
| something they learned in their regular studies.
| actfrench wrote:
| A glaring irony for me here is that historically, wealthier
| families have significantly more access to online courses. Rather
| than being the great force for democratization of education we
| all hoped for, research shows they are privileging the elite.
| What if we worked to expand access to online courses and improve
| them for all? https://edlab.tc.columbia.edu/blog/18957-MOOCs-Are-
| Not-the-S...
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Working to expand and improve is a worthy goal. I believe
| before the lockdown it remained an under invested niche for
| those not suitable for the existing schooling like outright
| remote (rural to even rural), very ill children, or those who
| had especially severe social issues from the "Lord of the
| Flies/prison run by the prisoners dynamic" dysfunctional norm
| structure of schools and bullying. It was viewed as the worse
| option especially for corner cases before it got forced into
| primetime at scale.
|
| On a side note you clearly didn't mean it in the negative sense
| but the rhetoric of "arbitrary option for improvement
| technology/advance is privileging the elite" bugs me as very
| zero sum. If any ammount of additional resources can yield at
| least a smaller edge then by definition the elite can perform
| better. The only alternative to that situation category is "no
| additional human effort can help". The framing in effect
| spitefully disregards the masses of "non-elite" both within and
| without access to the option and implicitly dismisses anything
| which helps because another gets helped more.
| turtlebits wrote:
| 5 is a crucial age in child development. Get offline and home
| school. Take a leave of absence if you really have to. Talk to
| your employer.
| nxc18 wrote:
| That's nice and great advice for parents who can afford that.
| Unfortunately most parents aren't in a position to do that.
|
| I know my parents growing up would have been in a world of hurt
| if they had to home school - it was hard enough making ends
| meet as it was.
|
| This situation is going to really entrench and amplify
| socioeconomic inequality - for the first time in generations we
| could see a world where only the very wealthy/privileged are
| able to give their kids a good education.
|
| FWIW 'leave of absence' isn't really a concept for many, many
| jobs.
| btilly wrote:
| There are very practical techniques for addressing these
| problems. However they aren't widely known.
|
| For example if you want to keep a kid still to listen, give them
| something good to fiddle with. For example, teach kids how to
| finger knit. And then have them do simple finger knitting while
| they are listening. The finger knitting is an outlet for the
| ansies, and they are able to pay better attention, for longer.
|
| You also have to be more cognizant of kid limitations when you
| have less feedback. But we haven't done that. We have kept the
| same schedule. It is easier to miss a kid acting out over Zoom.
| And the combination is bad. We really need to tell kids to get up
| and do jumping jacks, come back in 15 minutes with milk and
| cookies.
| bollu wrote:
| This is very interesting. What other techniques exist, apart
| from finger-knitting which are unobtrusive and help as an
| outlet?
| doggydogs94 wrote:
| I expect that the next school year will be a virtual "gap" year.
| As the author illustrates, anything we do with remote learning is
| just wishful thinking.
| organsnyder wrote:
| Given the amount of brain development that happens at young
| ages, this is daunting to consider.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| The important things that kids are learning at these ages are
| the psychosocial things - how to wait your turn, how to
| resolve conflicts, how to share, etc. None of this, I'm
| guessing, can be replicated in online learning, anyway. And
| my understanding is that that stuff is best learned at
| specific developmental periods. We just have to do our best
| to make sure our kids are getting it outside of school.
|
| I'm not nearly as worried about the 3 R's. I just don't
| expect that we'll find there's much long term difference
| between kids who are taught to read in 1st and second grade,
| and kids who are taught to read in kindergarten and 1st
| grade.
| klipt wrote:
| Kids spending more time playing outside and some less time on
| stressful academics is probably good for them. We didn't
| evolve to sit sedentary in a classroom.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| It is just _insane_ how night and day my 3-year-old is in
| terms of his ability to sit and focus, after he has
| sufficient "go wild" time in the yard, playground, street,
| or basement.
|
| I'm not sure how much school has changed, but for me, in
| the 90s, the ~90 minutes (split into three uneven segments)
| per day of physical activity was just not enough. Could
| have used half and half.
| detaro wrote:
| I'm worried for the kids that don't get to play outside
| and/or socialize in such a situation though. Which sadly
| will exist.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Why did we ever send them into classrooms in the first
| place if it's "probably good for them [to spend] more time
| playing outside and some less time on stressful academics"?
|
| I think it's "probably good" for them to learn something,
| too. It's not as if it's a 9-5 job after which they come
| home, do housework, file taxes, try to socialize with the
| family a bit, and go to bed exhausted. They do still have
| time to be kids besides school at that age (barring less
| common cases like toxic families and extreme poverty, of
| course).
|
| Also, we didn't evolve to read books, use chairs, power our
| stove with electricity from hydroelectric power plants,
| etc., but I'd rather not cut those out of my life either.
| We _did_ evolve to run many miles behind prey, but I don 't
| mind not practicing that. It's a really weird argument that
| a lot of people seem to use, "we didn't evolve to", which
| can be applied to virtually everything we do today. It
| seems to be a placeholder for when something seems
| disagreeable to you but you can't actually articulate why
| or be bothered to look into whether that is the case.
| mmm_grayons wrote:
| I'd agree it would be extremely rare to find a child who does
| well with virtual school. The obvious question is, "What is the
| better option?" The clinical, disconnected nature of any return
| to a physical classroom will result in many of the same
| disadvantages as virtual school from home. All it does is
| basically transfer the burden of child care. This is a difficulty
| every parent currently faces, and this article would be a lot
| more valuable if it proposed a better option.
| tboyd47 wrote:
| I just pulled my own kids out of public school because I can't
| stomach it either. I can't in good conscience subject my kids to
| 6 hours of online class 5 days a week. Whether or not you want to
| judge me for feeling this way or call me nasty names, "psychic
| torture" is exactly how I'd describe the solution these educators
| have come up with.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| I would prefer this but my wife and I both work, I didn't want
| to make my kid re-test into grade level/honors, and they didn't
| release the "on screen 8am, off screen 2pm" schedule until last
| week.. oh well I guess we will see how it goes.
|
| I specifically complained that the _main_ benefit of remote
| learning is the at-your-own-pace aspect of it, which is being
| tossed out the window. I swear the district was more concerned
| with the teachers putting in the correct number of working
| hours than with doing things that might actually work for kids.
| syndacks wrote:
| Educators did not come up with this plan, politicians did by
| their lack of any sort of COVID response.
|
| Do you really think educators want to do remote learning?
|
| My heart goes out to all the teachers who have to deal with
| this. It's as hard on them as it is parents and students.
| tboyd47 wrote:
| Ah, excuse me, I didn't mean to slight the real educators. I
| meant the phony ones who think this is a reasonable plan.
|
| I agree with you completely. We love the teachers at our
| kids' school and saying goodbye to them was the hardest part
| of leaving. They are just as frustrated. But the people who
| think that this solution is a reasonable one are insane.
| danans wrote:
| > I meant the phony ones who think this is a reasonable
| plan.
|
| I'm not sure what you mean by "reasonable", but I've yet to
| come across a single educator or administrator who thinks
| remote school is a good thing. They all think it's just the
| least bad among a set of bad options. Where are you finding
| educators who think it's actually net-positive and not just
| an unfortunate reality?
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Our first week was rough. But our school came up with a much
| better schedule for our kindergartener.
|
| Class is now from 8:20-9am, meet in small group with the
| teacher for 30 minutes (time depends upon your group), then
| closing instruction at 12:45pm-1:15pm.
|
| The rest of the time is "self study". Basically, you have
| assignments you need to do and complete with your kid. You can
| do it during self study time. Or at night. Or whenever.
|
| The first week they tried to do 8:20-11:10 (with 10 minute
| breaks every 50 minutes) of instruction. It really didn't work.
| This new schedule has been much more feasible to deal with.
| tboyd47 wrote:
| I imagine most school districts, including ours, will land on
| something like what you just described, albeit after a period
| of jerking parents around. Since your school was only
| planning on three hours a day, sounds like they are more
| flexible than mine, which demands six. I understand even the
| most school-marmiest of homeschooling parents wouldn't impose
| more than 1-2 hours of class on 5 and 6-year-olds.
|
| I have been preparing for the possibility of homeschooling
| all summer, so we were ready to pull the trigger. I just
| didn't expect it to be Day 2!
| swayvil wrote:
| I'm a general contractor. I remodel houses.
|
| A few years ago I worked with an extremely good painter. Second
| generation professional painter. Very impressive fellow.
|
| Just by working with him my painting skills went up a couple
| levels. I'm way better than I was.
|
| There was no formal instruction. No teaching. Just working
| together. Seeing how he does things. Watching him with a brush.
|
| The same thing just recently happened with a drywall guy I worked
| near. A superpro. I am MUCH better at mudding drywall now. No
| instruction occurred. Just by working near him.
|
| This is an ancient and well-known phenomenon. Call it psychic
| communication. Call it mind-melding. Whatever it is, it's real.
|
| And this virtual education is a joke. PAINFULLY bullshit. I
| advise all students to blow that time-wasting shit right off.
| M277 wrote:
| It's much, much worse in third world countries. Egyptian here.
|
| Tech illiteracy is rampant, and many people don't know even the
| basics of using computers. Not only that, but due to poverty,
| most don't even have computers and just use mobile phones. For
| many, this was the first time they got to use a PC/Laptop. A
| large group just used mobile phones, though. Then you have the
| internet... it's just not usable for live conferencing, so when
| they tried it, it was awful.. then the classes were recorded,
| with low quality and resolution to have small filesizes for
| private schools. Most public schools basically did away with the
| whole thing and the kids didn't get any classes at all.
|
| On top of all of that, the educational system (regular education,
| not the higher education) here is already bad in-class.
|
| In the end, they just decided to cancel the exams, and had the
| students do a pass/fail research paper about a topic. Although
| most schools basically just made everyone pass.
|
| Universities were differently handled, though. Also, grade 12 was
| handled regularly (the students already don't attend school) with
| regular physical exams since it's an important year.
| jdmoreira wrote:
| The problem is not so much that kids can't handle virtual
| education as much as we not being able to care for our kids
| because we have a jobs. Think about it... Do you think it's
| normal for a human child to be institutionalized just because
| his/her parents are working? Where is their hunter-gatherer band
| when your kids need it? Nothing about 2020 nuclear family society
| is normal for a human child. Nothing at all.
| actfrench wrote:
| Exactly. Academic education (subject mastery and developing
| tools to learn), childcare (being safe and happy and engaged
| while parents are working) and social learning (making friends,
| learning to work/collaborate with a group) are generally
| bundled together as one concept in a very weird way. As
| families, communities and as a nation, we need to strive to
| provide enriching childcare to our kids, great social
| experiences and quality education to them. Sometimes these
| things happen at the same time, but they don't have to. And
| sometimes they are best addressed separately. If we start
| thinking and addressing them individually, we might find ways
| to do all of them better.
| baq wrote:
| your points seem to be contradicting each other. hunter
| gatherers would naturally have institutionalized child care -
| when some people go gathering, some people go hunting and some
| people stay put and look after the tribe's children if they
| aren't ready to do either. this is about as far from a nuclear
| family as you can get though, especially if the tribal culture
| isn't monogamous and e.g. a child can have many fathers who
| equally accept a child as theirs.
| jdmoreira wrote:
| Until very very recent times a child would accompany the
| parents in their daily activities and help.
| bluntfang wrote:
| how do the children learn how to pick up roles as a hunter
| and/or gatherer in the system you portray?
| supergeek133 wrote:
| I read it and ended being not sure what it was about.
|
| Unless you're going to end with a stance of "but we'll get
| through it because of COIVD" or "we should go back to school no
| matter what" I'm a little lost of the point here.
|
| Nobody is "doing this" to you, it's what we all have to do. Yes
| it impacts everyone different, but what's the message?
| dchess wrote:
| Couldn't agree more. This article fails the "so what" test.
| What are they recommending be done instead?
| dr-detroit wrote:
| Its a subtle threat that there will be hell to pay if this
| Brooklyn 5 year old doesn't get on an elite prep school track
| due to annoying public health needs.
| codefreakxff wrote:
| Wow. Agree with all the other comments. I read the whole article,
| and there is some next level self-centered entitlement here that
| has wholly passed on to "Raffi" the 5 year old who is only now
| learning not to deliberately make his little brother cry, and who
| has learned that spitting his drink on a laptop makes mommy and
| daddy take him to the park. While I want to empathize with the
| parents, the fact that they blame remote learning for all their
| problems rather than realizing that they have raised a hellion
| and dumped him on the poor teachers at school... and are bitter
| that now they have to deal with their own child... wow... yeah,
| definitely not the parents problem. Everything is to blame on
| remote learning! We better re-open the schools again so parents
| don't have to deal with their children!
| bosswipe wrote:
| > they have raised a hellion
|
| A five year old is far from having been raised. As a parent of
| a 6 year old I know a bunch of other parents that have similar
| experiences where their kids are revolting against being forced
| to sit in front of a virtual teacher for hours every day.
| Shorel wrote:
| You can't fix much of that stuff after he is 7 years old.
| Educate the child so you don't have to jail the adult. At
| least that's the common wisdom grandmothers say in my
| country.
|
| Some study I found that also mentions the seven-year
| milestone: https://news.softpedia.com/news/Our-Personality-
| Is-Fully-Dev...
| james_s_tayler wrote:
| Well about 1/4 of the prison population has ADHD and half
| are dyslexic. Female prison populations also have a very
| high rate of BPD.
|
| The grandmother's where you're from might benefit from
| learning about pervasive developmental disorders and the
| effects of trauma.
|
| Some people are dealing with stuff that isn't their fault
| and that they never got adequate support for.
| lucb1e wrote:
| BPD is "Borderline personality disorder", for anyone else
| not familiar with that TLA.
| danShumway wrote:
| The common wisdom is wrong. _Of course_ personalities
| develop after 7 years old. People 's personalities develop
| well into adulthood. Adults are capable of developing,
| continuing to mature, and changing their behaviors. Who I
| was at age 7 is not who I am today. Who I was at age _18_
| is not who I am today.
|
| Do people really think that anyone who fights with a
| sibling past the age of 7 is destined for prison? I guess I
| need to start making a plan for when I'm arrested.
| throwaways885 wrote:
| Maybe have have some empathy for the parents who are working
| from home, before you start insulting their parenting?
|
| Of course the 7 year old is acting out, but it's probably more
| to do with being stuck in a box/house all day with no
| interaction with their friends. And no, Zoom calls don't class
| as interaction for kids. This child desperately needs to play
| outside, not stuck behind a blurry screen learning maths.
| codefreakxff wrote:
| I do work from home, and my 10 year old is doing remote
| learning.
|
| There are many benefits to remote learning, and I know it
| will come as a shock to people who buy into the 'kids need to
| socialize' group-think, but the 'socializing' they do in
| school tends to be very limited in time (a couple of 10-15
| minute breaks on the playground, talking at lunch, disrupting
| classes and not listening to the teacher), and then there is
| the problem of bullying and cliques of students excluding
| 'non-conforming' students. Mental health at school isn't
| handled well. Fairness is out the window. School shootings
| are growing exponentially.
|
| https://www.ecori.org/public-safety/2019/9/7/us-school-
| shoot...
|
| Schools suck.
|
| I'd rather my child get his socializing from extracurricular
| activities with peers he knows and gets along with than
| dealing with the failures of our educational system.
|
| This article decries remote learning and offers nothing to
| move the conversation forward on what WOULD work. The author
| makes no point at all other than complaining about how her
| child can't sit still. And I'm saying I bet her child can't
| sit still in a physical school either, so its not about
| remote learning. It is because suddenly she has to be the one
| to deal with it instead of the teacher hidden away in a
| school building. The author wants to paint a picture of how
| bad remote learning is, when really it's just not suited for
| her child. It works fine for many other kids.
| throwaways885 wrote:
| Schools do suck, but those 15+60 minutes free time and all
| class time (which is inherently social) are SO incredibly
| valuable.
|
| > This article decries remote learning and offers nothing
| to move the conversation forward on what WOULD work. The
| author makes no point at all other than complaining about
| how her child can't sit still. And I'm saying I bet her
| child can't sit still in a physical school either, so its
| not about remote learning.
|
| Agreed, though I'd put that down to schools being un-
| engaging and useless and that gets _worse_ with remote. I'd
| be in favour of making 30-40% of the school day free time,
| like it is in high school. For knowledge work like
| learning, more hours doesn't necessarily mean more output,
| and it's really destructive to put that onto students.
| supergeek133 wrote:
| Yeah, I'm really missing the message here.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| All of these comments make me think HN has never interacted with
| a 5 year old. Adults are barely able to make it through a day of
| Zoom meetings without feeling drained, how do you expect an
| almost toddler to react when forced to sit in front of a screen?
|
| The only reasons adults can do it is years and years of learning
| impulse controls and suppression of bad emotions for everyone's
| good. A 5 year old does not have these skills, and will obviously
| act out as they have no other mechanism of dealing with it.
|
| Also, who said that this article has to have a point? The writer
| never claims to propose a solution, she is simply writing out her
| emotions for others to hear. Assuming she has been largely
| isolating, is it all that weird that she would talk about her
| experiences online?
| grahamburger wrote:
| It would be weird to expect young children to sit in long Zoom
| meetings. Are people actually doing that? I have 3 kids, the
| oldest two are elementary-school age. So far virtually none of
| their online learning has been video conference based. The
| younger one would sometimes do Zoom calls with his pre-k class
| at the end of last year, but it was just a few minutes to see
| his friends and sing some songs, not really about trying to
| learn academically. Both of them have online based activities
| assigned by their teachers, though. They are self-paced,
| somewhat gamified learning platforms (kind of like, but not
| actually, ABCMouse.) It's at most 1 hour a day for the younger
| one and maybe 2 for the older one, including 20-30 minutes of
| reading time. This year they are both doing in person classes
| two days a week and the rest from home, but again no Zoom
| meetings. The teachers are teaching the other half of the class
| on the other two days so couldn't really do in-person stuff
| anyway.
| garmaine wrote:
| Our elementary school is 5 hours of Webex meetings daily.
| There are breaks scattered in between, but it is grueling. My
| 4th grader can barely manage it, but my 1st grader can't sit
| still that long.
|
| Edit: Why is something like this downvoted? I didn't state
| anything other than my relevant direct experience.
| flavmartins wrote:
| Same here.
|
| Teacher has been recording a daily 7-10 minute lesson video
| for some of their core subjects.
|
| Then some assignment of online math, science, writing. Then
| one of the popular reading sites.
|
| The video calls have all been once per week for 30-45 minutes
| but mostly social for the kids to interact with each other.
|
| Not sure who really expects 5 hours of video.
| gautamdivgi wrote:
| All elementary school is glorified day care. Born in 76 in
| India(yes, I'm getting old) - but elementary school was 2.5
| hours with a 1/2 hour break. I turned out ok - didn't miss out
| on "educational opportunity".
| mrighele wrote:
| > how do you expect an almost toddler to react when forced to
| sit in front of a screen?
|
| I'm sure any parent will say that it is impossible, and the
| issue is not the screen, but sitting still. I am in fact
| surprised that the teachers even asked to make video calls at
| that age. I don't know about USA preschools but here 5 years
| olds don't study sitting on a desk all day long, so I don't
| know how they can expect a kid to do that at home.
|
| When my daughter (preschool age) had to stay home because of
| the virus, the teachers started to send us videos of activities
| to do at home, but those were for the parents, not for her.
| actfrench wrote:
| A lot of US kids are forced to sit still whether they're in
| front of a screen or in a physical classroom. Typically it's
| better in preschool, but many kindergarteners only get 20
| minutes a day to play if that.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/learning/do-kids-need-
| rec...
| Shared404 wrote:
| At an elementary school near me they would only get to do
| recess on Fridays, and that's assuming they behaved.
| loxs wrote:
| I don't think Zoom is the problem. It's just as bad in the
| classroom. The only difference is that in the classroom there
| is a century old system in place, designed and tested to crush
| children's emotions and frustrations and also designed to
| transform them into obedient tax cows. And in the classroom you
| are not witness to this process.
| learc83 wrote:
| Kids can't learn all day long in a classroom. I don't know why
| we expect them to be able to do it remotely. School has always
| been 1/3 learning 2/3 baby sitting.
|
| When my parents were kids, they only went to kindergarten for
| half a day.
| whateveracct wrote:
| Turns out a lot of education is just child care. And now
| parents are having to see it firsthand instead of offloading
| it to a professional.
| floren wrote:
| > When my parents were kids, they only went to kindergarten
| for half a day.
|
| Wait, hang on, is kindergarten all-day now? I was in
| kindergarten in... 1992, and it was half a day.
| redshirtrob wrote:
| I had all day kindergarten in '83. First half was in
| English, and the second half was in French. And no, this
| was not a private school. This was Cincinnati Public.
| ardit33 wrote:
| I have a curious question, can you speak/do you know
| French now?
| inerte wrote:
| My son's school changed to full day this year (Los Gatos,
| CA area) - but I think all the other schools in the
| district were full day already. When he did Kindergarten
| few years ago, it was for half a day.
| vonmoltke wrote:
| I had "all-day" (0800 - 1400, same as the elementary
| grades) kindergarten in Florida in 1985.
| jdofaz wrote:
| Arizona does not fund full day kindergarten
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| This isn't to the actual study (which I'm having trouble
| finding), but to the NEA's policy brief on all day
| kindergarten.
|
| https://www.nea.org/assets/docs/18001_Full-
| Day_Kindergarten_...
|
| The TL;DR being that all day Kindergarten is strongly
| associated with better educational outcomes. As a result,
| many districts are moving towards full day.
| grahamburger wrote:
| My kid's Kindergarten is still half day. As far as I know
| half-day kindergarten is still the standard in my state
| (Utah.)
| lhorie wrote:
| It's half day in SF (source: daughter is in lafayette).
| Private pre-K can be full day (it's basically glorified
| daycare).
| Shared404 wrote:
| All day in Texas.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Yes I was born in 92 and it was all day when I went.
| nradov wrote:
| Kindergarten in the US became far more academically focused
| after the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and the adoption
| of Common Core curriculum. Most schools also changed the age
| cutoff date for kindergarten so the average student is now
| slightly older.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > Kindergarten in the US became far more academically
| focused after the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and the
| adoption of Common Core curriculum.
|
| My understanding is that this is at least driven in part by
| academia, who have gradually advocated earlier and earlier
| interventions for lower performing students.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| Sounds really crazy to me, here in Hungary most kids start
| structured classes at 6 or 7 years old. Before that it's
| just playing outside, singing, listening to fairy tales,
| going to hiking trips, to the zoo etc.
|
| This tight grip on American kids looks extremely stressful
| and harmful (helicopter/bubble wrap parenting, structuring
| every waking hour with classes and extracurriculars,
| driving them everywhere, never leaving them to themselves
| etc).
| actfrench wrote:
| Same with Finland. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/
| archive/2015/10/the-jo...
|
| Most research shows that academic study vs play in
| preschool makes little difference in how kids turn out
| later in life. And that play might even be better.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/20/well/family/let-kids-
| play...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/well/family/taking-
| playti...
| grugagag wrote:
| Of course it is harmful. And that together with
| standardized tests, textbooks stuffed with information
| that neither the editors fully read is a recipe for a bad
| outcome. And it doesn't end there, professors are
| bombarded with so much bureaucratic crap that many of
| them who would otherwise put up with really bad pay just
| to be able to teach kids simply give up, but that's just
| a tangent here.
|
| When kids play they learn a whole lot more about the
| world, social interactions, their bodies and what not.
| Kids can learn some things quite early and it is not a
| bad idea to teach them early either a second language or
| to read early or some other useful skills. But the
| problem is this has been exaggerated greatly and way too
| much is pushed on them.
| Shared404 wrote:
| Well clearly you are incorrect because all of the smart
| people said we have to test to make sure that the kids
| are learning and we can only make sure that the kids
| learn by sitting them down and making sure they know the
| trivia for the test to make sure their learning, because
| the smart people said the test will make them learn, by
| making sure their learning.
|
| /s
|
| On the bright side, for every one of the above
| administrators there is a teacher who actually wants to
| help kids grow.
|
| Edit: Teacher -> Administrator. I haven't met teachers
| who actually like standardized testing.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| You make fun of the educational structure, but it's base
| structure can clearly succeed if given the right support
| from the family and the correct budget. Japan has done
| exceedingly well (though a little over stressed - there
| can be balance) with a very similar base model.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Japan
|
| I understand that bashing all things American has become
| en vogue, but some things have just become corrupted due
| to lack of proper maintenance, really. Much like our
| health care system which has become over saturated with
| special interest and privatisation instead of a patient
| focus.
|
| We've forgotten how to keep our eye on the prize, as it
| were, and lost focus on what the goal actually is.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I don't want to say American's don't love and cherish
| their children. But the uncomfortable truth is that our
| culture has become so materialist that, on a mass scale,
| when we look at our children, we don't really see the
| people they are now. We see the economic participants
| they will be in 15 years.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| I think it's a bit different. This forcing of academics
| into Kindergarten is more of a panic reaction to the
| overall low quality of the American education system.
| Unfortunately, this reaction ignores cognitive science
| for a try-harder approach.
|
| It isn't about materialism or care. It's about having
| education driven by supposition instead of evidence and
| what we know works. Phonics would still be core to early
| curriculum, for example, if we followed the science. It's
| harder to teach than "whole word" reading, but phonics
| actually works and we have decades of evidence, and
| mountains of cognitive science to show us why.
| actfrench wrote:
| "forced to sit in front of a screen" is the key phrase here.
| What if we didn't force them to sit, but allowed them to stand
| and move about freely, come and go when they please, have some
| autonomy and decision making power around what goes on in class
| (e.g. share preferences for what they want to learn) and give
| them frequent movement breaks (a good set of headphones, an
| ipad with a wide lens attached allows that). What if we engaged
| them more so they were excited to see what was happening on
| their screen? Kids aren't any more excited to sit and do
| something boring than we are.
|
| The key problem here(and it's not a small one) is that we need
| to give ALL kids access to this hardware to support their
| learning, not just a few. Right now only 18% of US households
| have a device. I've seen school districts short 20,000
| computers.
| lhorie wrote:
| I have two kids doing remote learning (one in kinder, one in
| 3rd grade). Since the 5yo is only on her 3rd day of remote
| learning ever, I'm spending more time "babysitting" her
| session. The class does involve some amount of physical
| movement (e.g "now go bring something square") and leaving
| the zoom meeting for 30 min periods to focus on drawing
| activities, but then I need to be on top of whether the kid
| is still engaged (or whether she wandered off to play with
| legos) and of what times the zoom class resumes. When you're
| dealing w/ a class of 20-30 small kids, there's a also good
| chunk of time wasted on logistics (fumbling w/ zoom password,
| waiting for kids to rejoin the meeting, "jimmy, you need to
| mute/unmute yourself", "please raise your hand if you want to
| talk" reminders, etc).
|
| I feel that the class content seems sufficiently engaging
| (compared to my own kinder experience of strict butts-in-
| chair, all forward facing desks and a blackboard in a
| physical class), but even then, it requires dividing my
| attention between work and making sure the kid is on task.
|
| The third grader has some experience with remote learning
| from before summer vacations, so things are relatively more
| smooth when the class is on, but we still need to keep tabs
| on when recess breaks are supposed to end. His teacher
| apparently has quite a bit more experience w/ remote learning
| from teaching classes during summer, and the class appears
| fairly engaging, with good usage of share screen and
| multimedia. But I do feel like the quality of learning seems
| low. Not sure if it's because of US standards. My son's
| curriculum hasn't really touched multiplication yet, but I
| distinctively remember having that mastered in 3rd grade, and
| also singapore math booklets that my wife bought to
| complement studies also apply both multiplication and
| division extensively at 3rd grade level)
|
| It can also be challenging to juggle both parents AND both
| kids having zoom meetings simultaneously, since meetings are
| mutually disruptive, especially with loud multimedia
| activities. I feel like the parts that work the best are the
| ones similar to my old-school education: giving instructions
| on a task, then letting kids do them, recess, rinse and
| repeat. I'm not really sold on the high tech gimmicks (videos
| w/ songs etc).
| elliekelly wrote:
| Yes and I'd even go so far as to say I'm not sure the
| "screen" really has much to do with the difficulty. I had a
| hard time sitting and paying attention in class 25 years ago.
| All of my teachers "solved" this by putting me in the front
| row so they could keep an eye on me and remind me to sit
| again. But my 3rd grade teacher gave me a desk in the back
| row so I could sit in my chair, sit on my desk, or stand
| without bothering the other students. It turned out I _could_
| pay attention when I wasn't forced to assume the learning
| position.
| somethoughts wrote:
| A balance ball seems to be working better than a hard wood
| chair was for the seven year old to handle 3-4 hours of Zoom.
| Posture is much better too.
|
| Also trying to figure out how to throw up the Zoom conference
| on the TV. I think it'll probably be much more natural for
| the kids.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Google Chrome and macOS can both do desktop mirroring (to a
| Chromecast device or Apple TV respectively), so then you
| just need a webcam with a long cable you can stick on top
| of the TV.
| jonahbenton wrote:
| It's a much bigger question/challenge than lack of hardware.
|
| With all respect, the model this assumes for how kids work...
| is just not how kids work. It's not how attention works.
|
| Think about it like a movie. Kids at different ages will sit
| through movies of different lengths and subjects. Those
| movies have production budgets- of minimum thousands of
| dollars per second even at the lowest end, and shooting and
| editing commitments that are tens to hundreds or more person
| hours per video second.
|
| Expecting a _live performer_ to engage not just 1 passive kid
| but n active kids with a new show _every day_ over a screen-
| where every mistake or every blip doesn 't get edited out in
| post but actually has to be dealt with in real time, while
| each kid has their own dynamics, their own family situations,
| their own issues PRESENT WITH THEM while all this is going
| on....
|
| In terms of the quantity of human attention at production
| time to ensure consumer engagement- the ratio between a movie
| and a live person on the other side of the screen is, like,
| 1,000,000 to 1.
|
| It is NOT POSSIBLE to solve the engagement problem in the way
| that remote school is expected to solve for it and there is
| no model, resource, technology, or anything that makes it
| work.
|
| This is coming from a long time ed tech advocate, having
| built games and education platforms and worked in schools and
| having 3 kids of my own.
|
| What we are doing with remote school is INSANITY.
|
| Unfortunately, the alternatives are also insane.
|
| There is no solving anything. There's no what if. There's no
| answer.
|
| And more pointedly- it sounds like the poster here does not
| have kids.
|
| Pro tip, no offense intended- if you don't have kids- don't
| weigh in on these issues. You don't know what you're talking
| about. And you don't have any idea how much you don't know
| what you're talking about. It isn't worth it for you or for
| anyone else to engage.
|
| Have a nice day.
| bertjk wrote:
| > if you don't have kids- don't weigh in on these issues
|
| I agree, but would also add that even if you do have kids,
| they probably have personalities and circumstances unlike
| everyone else's kids. And that in all likelihood your
| sample size is too hilariously small to be able to produce
| useful broad generalizations from your experience.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| The author does allude to this, by mentioning that remote
| learning is almost worse than nothing.
|
| Honestly, we probably should just cancel at least the first
| half of the school year altogether, but that would mean
| admitting how utterly dismal our Covid response has been,
| and so it is not politically possible. Thus a whole
| generation of kids have to deal with this nonsense. It's a
| shame.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > that would mean admitting how utterly dismal our Covid
| response has been
|
| Only if there would've been a better way. While COVID
| surely could've been handled a bit better overall, I
| don't think a lockdown was fully avoidable (note that it
| escaped Wuhan while the city was in a lockdown stricter
| than anything seen outside of Wuhan) and remote learning
| is, as shown above, not ideal either. So I don't think
| admitting that this school year was bad equals admitting
| a bad response to COVID.
| actfrench wrote:
| I don't think it's so much screens themselves, but the way they
| are used. New research actually suggests touch screens might
| improve focus in toddlers.
| https://www.bath.ac.uk/announcements/toddlers-who-use-touchs...
|
| New media has always met with resistance. Books were once
| considered poisonous trash. Now they're seen as healthy and
| educational. "In Plato's dialogue, the Phaedrus, written in 360
| BCE, Socrates warned that reliance on the written word would
| weaken individuals' memory, and remove from them the
| responsibility of rememberin" https://aeon.co/essays/contagion-
| poison-trigger-books-have-a...
| swayvil wrote:
| God, ZOOM sucks so hard. I can't stand to look at that shit.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| > _how do you expect an almost toddler to react when forced to
| sit in front of a screen?_
|
| And on top of this, we should not be asking "can they" but
| instead "should they" have this kind of life.
| codefreakxff wrote:
| Just to clarify, a "toddler" is 1-3 years old. So a 5 year old
| is not at all "almost a toddler".
|
| "A 5 year old does not have these skills"
|
| They should have learned that by age 4, which is why kids start
| pre-k/k at the 4/5 age range.
|
| https://mom.com/kids/5106-what-age-do-kids-have-impulse-cont...
|
| "Who said this article has to have a point?"
|
| Probably because we expect more from the source - The Atlantic.
| If this was the author's personal blog I would not be saying
| anything. But this article sits next to subjects like:
|
| - Can a Protest Movement Topple Netanyahu? - Russiagate Was Not
| a Hoax - Our Students Are Depending on Us, teaching through
| Covid-19
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| > Just to clarify, a "toddler" is 1-3 years old. So a 5 year
| old is not at all "almost a toddler".
|
| Different kids develop differently.
|
| > They should have learned that by age 4, which is why kids
| start pre-k/k at the 4/5 age range.
|
| A large amount of adults don't have these skills developed.
|
| > Probably because we expect more from the source - The
| Atlantic.
|
| This point I agree with. At the same time, I believe purely
| emotional ranting pieces have a place on the web too.
| einarfd wrote:
| A lot of people complain about Zoom fatigue, and while on one
| hand I'm fairly happy that it is a competitors offering that
| has ended up with being a part of that moniker, and not the
| product I'm working on, it is somewhat unfair to blame Zoom or
| the software stack for that. The main culprit for messing up
| meetings are the cameras and the microphones on laptops. I'm
| not sure if there are any vendors at all, including Apple which
| is the laptop vendor I use, which has god quality camera and
| microphones on their kit. I'm lucky enough to work in a group
| where everyone has dedicated video conferencing kit, and this
| makes a big difference. The quality gap between someone on
| system with proper camera and microphones, and someone calling
| in on laptop is huge. I get that not everyone can go out and
| buy dedicated kit, and maybe the dedicated kit don't work with
| you video conferencing vendor. But getting the people you work
| with on a decent USB camera with inbuilt microphones, is
| something everyone should have a look at. The chances are high
| it will make your days more pleasant.
|
| When It comes to five year olds doing schooling over video
| conferencing. I'm far from an expert on kids, I don't have kids
| and I don't want kids. But it does sound to me like a fools
| errand, and I'm super happy I'm not going to participate in
| that nightmare.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| You can buy a top-of-the-line $3,000 16" Macbook Pro and it
| comes with a garbage-tier 720p webcam that has terrible
| dynamic range and low-light performance. It's _embarrassing_.
| Most Windows laptops at a third of the price have
| significantly better webcams.
| ghaff wrote:
| I assume thinness is part of the problem--my high-end
| Logitech webcam is about an inch thick. Also webcam quality
| was probably just not much of a consideration until fairly
| recently.
|
| But, even if someone doesn't more or less set up a studio
| as I've done to a degree and some of my colleagues have
| done, there are some pretty basic things related to
| lighting and webcam height that can be done pretty easily
| by most people. Though I'd add that comms problems are also
| a frequent annoyance and there's not a lot people can do
| there.
|
| I'd add though that I normally move around my house when
| I'm working. Sitting at a desk all day in a "studio"
| doesn't really work for me.
| bdamm wrote:
| iPhone cameras are pretty good and they're very thin.
| Front or back.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Yeah, if they put in any of the cameras from an iPhone
| (or any flagship smartphone for that matter) it would be
| an unbelievable leap in quality. There's no way they
| can't find space for it.
| Miraste wrote:
| If you look at iFixit teardowns, even the front camera
| modules are practically the full thickness of the phone,
| which is much thicker than a MacBook lid.
| easde wrote:
| Unfortunately, they're not thin compared to a laptop lid.
| Especially with the taper near the edges that Macbooks
| and many other high-end laptops have. There are some
| exotic optical solutions out there that allow for thinner
| lenses but I doubt we'll see those in laptops anytime
| soon.
| ghaff wrote:
| Cameras are also a really big deal in the context of
| smartphones. I assume a lot of silicon is devoted to
| making them work well with a small sensor in a smallish
| footprint. Apple is probably not going to add a couple
| hundred dollars to a MacBook BOM (and maybe a bump for
| the lens) for a better webcam--at least they wouldn't
| have before the current situation. Who knows now? Maybe a
| top-notch webcam is a selling point. Many people still
| wouldn't set up lighting and eliminate backlighting to
| give it a chance.
| oblio wrote:
| A top notch camera is not "a couple hundred dollars" on a
| BOM. Google Pixel 4a costs $350 for the whole device and
| it has a great camera, more than enough to serve as a
| webcam.
|
| You need a 2.1 MP camera to get 1080p, which the vast
| majority of laptop webcams don't do. The last time you
| could get a 2.1 MP main camera in any half decent phone
| was probably back in 2015. Laptop makers just didn't
| care, it wasn't a priority for most users before Covid.
| Miraste wrote:
| The ultrabooks that are priced to compete with MacBooks
| have even worse webcams than Apple uses, because they have
| even thinner lids and bezels. It's not a question of cost,
| it's the result of physical laws and design priorities.
|
| It is interesting that companies are willing to put
| massive, tumorous lumps and display cutouts on smartphones
| in the name of picture quality but not even a little bump
| on laptop lids.
| dageshi wrote:
| It's pretty obvious why, people make buying decisions on
| phones based on the quality of the cameras, both the back
| camera and the "selfie" camera. They don't do that on
| laptops because historically whatever was there was good
| enough.
| sologoub wrote:
| I've been using ChromeOS tablet as my video conferencing rig
| with front firing speakers and good microphone array. No echo
| and no overheated MacBook Pro.
|
| Suspect a newish iPad could work well too.
| itronitron wrote:
| I pulled my teenagers out of 'classroom' oriented school so
| that they can just do self-paced online courses instead of
| risking a repeat of the disaster from last semester when their
| school tried to do 'distance' learning with zoom meetings. I
| can't imagine a five year old doing well with this.
| vkou wrote:
| > how do you expect an almost toddler to react when forced to
| sit in front of a screen?
|
| The same way that you expect a kid to sit more-or-less still,
| and not-too-disruptively in a classroom with 29 other children
| for 6 hours a day.
|
| When they, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, can't, we
| diagnose them with ADHD and give them a Ritalin patch.
|
| I get it. Remote learning isn't great. It's worse than in-
| person learning, which isn't a high bar to begin with.
| Unfortunately, in-person learning currently carries with it the
| risk of death and disability to teachers. We could have taken
| some steps to deal with that risk, three months ago (Smaller
| classes, isolating students from teachers, training glorified
| babysitters who aren't over the age of 50 to mind classes
| during non-instruction time, etc), but it seems that all of our
| leaders and planners were convinced that this COVID thing would
| blow over by August.
| [deleted]
| vinbreau wrote:
| My daughter started Kindergarten and we're doing remote
| learning. She' almost 5 years old and can work a computer for
| the things she needs. But she can't work a zoom meeting. So I
| am a teacher's asst. from 8am until 2:30 pm. It's exhausting
| and sometimes I take a 2 hour nap afterward. It's hard on her
| because until a few weeks ago she would wake up, come into my
| office with me and watch shows on a laptop, maybe play some
| Minecraft. Now I wake her up instead, and prep her for school,
| which is in the same office she used to have fun in. She has
| been adjusting slowly, but it has not been without breakdowns
| on all our parts.
| megablast wrote:
| You have trained your 5 yo to just watch shit on the laptop??
| And you think that's all perfectly fine?? Wow.
| philsnow wrote:
| Depending on the state, education isn't compulsory until 6 or
| 7 years. Would it be an option for you to just hold off on
| the structured approach for another 6-12 months and let her
| play?
| actfrench wrote:
| Here's a crazy idea: What if we raised our children to process
| their difficult emotions instead of suppress them and stay
| active and move freely while working and studying (instead of
| sitting in a chair at a desk)
| maps7 wrote:
| I feel I would thrive in a movement based work environment. I
| think and articulate much better when walking.
| dageshi wrote:
| If I had infinite money, I'd build an office on an entire
| floor, with the desk in the middle and a kind of walking
| track around it that I could do circles on, sometimes I
| just really have to walk.
| pwinnski wrote:
| Good luck!
| nickff wrote:
| It's not what teachers are used to or desire, and the
| educational system is primarily designed for teachers.
| vkou wrote:
| The education system is primarily designed for controlling
| costs, and making children easy to manage.
| toper-centage wrote:
| Unfortunately that is incompatible with 30 children in a
| classroom being managed but a single underpaid teacher.
| trhway wrote:
| so, who is up for a startup - an AI-agent as a teacher,
| each child gets his own teacher, or several simultaneously,
| basically personalized Muppet show guiding the child
| through the intricacies of 1+1=2 and how to write "mom".
|
| For the older students - some FPS (multi-played by the
| whole class or school against school) with math and other
| problems to unlock new more powerful weapons/etc. should
| work too - anybody who didn't do the homework and thus
| fails to solve the problems fast naturally becomes a bad
| teammate and the peer pressure is the king at that age.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Not sure if serious...
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Oh sure, we'll just get some AI capable of teaching
| children, I'm sure GPT-3 with a little prompting is more
| than enough for that.
|
| And of course, what else could maths education value
| other than speed of figuring out problems? After all,
| Cauchy was famed as the fastest differentiator in the
| west, wasn't he?
| marta_morena_25 wrote:
| Here is a crazy idea that needs to come before this: What if
| we taught our adult population to process their difficult
| emotions instead of suppressing them and stay active and move
| freely while working and studying.
|
| Actually, this already falls flat in the first section. At
| least 90% of adult fail on that one. How are they supposed to
| teach something to their children that they themselves don't
| even understand? And teaching is usually much more difficult
| than understanding something yourself.
|
| Which brings us to "school should teach that". But schools
| are not designed for that and teachers are not qualified for
| that. Hell, it's already an exception to meet a teacher who
| can properly convey the meaning of "1+1=2", not to mention a
| teacher who can teach children, who are not their own, how to
| process difficult emotions. Good luck with that
| dstick wrote:
| Is there some deeper meaning to 1 + 1 = 2 you could
| enlighten us on? Most teachers I've met seem perfectly
| capable at getting at least that across.
| marta_morena_25 wrote:
| "seem perfectly capable at getting at least that across"
| yeah, that's part of the problem. They already know that
| 1+1=2, or so you'd think. But you would be hard pressed
| to find a teacher who can actually explain WHY 1+1=2
| (which is based in how our number system was created and
| using proof by induction). Anyway, that is besides the
| point, since you won't teach children math with college
| approaches, but the important thing is that most teachers
| don't understand what they teach, they just "say what
| they remember".
|
| And that doesn't pair well with children's insatiable
| "why" requests, even if they don't utter them. Teaching
| children is actually harder than teaching adults, because
| most adults largely gave up on the "why" and just settle
| on "I gotta remember that, if I want to pass the next
| exam" (school did a good job with them I guess).
|
| So why 1+1=2? There is a lot of depth in that that is
| left unanswered and children are forced to memorize the
| answer. From then on, a sharp decline of cognitive
| ability follows as they "graduate" through our excellent
| school systems...
| hackermailman wrote:
| Poh-Shen Loh has a math course for middle school kids,
| and a weekly live interactive youtube stream specifically
| to answer questions kids ask teachers.
|
| One on his channel is to explain to kids how the
| determinant works, why matrix multiplication is done in
| that specific order, etc. Check them out sometime esp his
| Friday 'ask math anything' live lectures.
| candu wrote:
| Well, if you want to be _extremely rigorous_, there's
| always
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principia_Mathematica ;)
|
| Less flippantly: pedagogically, there's a big difference
| between "here's your addition tables, memorize them" and
| "if I have 1 of _anything_ and another 1 of that same
| thing, I now have 2 of that thing." The latter offers way
| more opportunities for further thought: by that logic, if
| I have 2 things and I take 1 away, I now have 1 thing! If
| I have 2 rocks and 2 sheep, I can count the sheep by
| laying out 1 rock per sheep! And since I can add more
| things, maybe there are more numbers for those amounts of
| things too? And what about differently-sized things? Or
| parts of things? Or...
|
| That's the difference between getting "1 + 1 = 2" across
| as a literal by-the-book fact, and getting it across as
| an invitation to build / connect ideas and ask further
| questions.
| jstanley wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that is already how addition is taught.
| I'm not a fan of formal education _at all_ , but I'm not
| sure what you think schools are missing here?
| danudey wrote:
| We were extremely lucky to have a great K teacher who
| really wanted to work with us and our son to help him
| through his difficult time adjusting to school. We worked
| with him quite a bit, and by the "end of the year" (i.e.
| spring break, when lockdown started), he was processing his
| feelings of overwhelmedness much better, and going to her
| (and just collapsing into a heap in her lap) when he felt
| overwhelmed.
|
| Compare that to a friend's son, who is the same age as ours
| but has some developmental delays of some type (I assume).
| Their teacher told them that they had to "get this dealt
| with"; in other words, "fix your kid so I don't have to
| deal with him". Not exactly a welcoming and comforting
| environment for a child who needs to be met halfway.
|
| I mentioned this anecdote to our son's teacher and her
| first comment was "wow... is she an older teacher?" And
| yes, she was. She's been working with kids for 30 years,
| probably isn't as flexible in terms of learning strategies
| as younger teachers are, and, probably even worse, has been
| underpaid (and under-respected) for that whole time, so
| she's surely just burnt out and waiting for retirement at
| this point.
|
| Maybe if teaching paid decent money we'd have more teachers
| who could put in the time and emotional energy to nurture
| their students, rather than just putting them through the
| pipeline, and who wouldn't get so cynical and short-
| tempered by the end of their career.
| ghaff wrote:
| I certainly can't really deal with all-day conferences over
| video. I dip in and out. And I would observe that what _many_
| tech events are doing is spreading things out over more days
| with shorter windows per day. If a one-week workshop at MIT
| felt it needed to transition to shorter sessions over 3 weeks
| for video, that just might say something about online learning
| for kids.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > how do you expect an almost toddler to react when forced to
| sit in front of a screen?
|
| Toddlers love sitting in front of a screen when Sesame Street
| is on. I guess we'll find out how educational SS actually is.
| bdamm wrote:
| Modern Sesame Street is a train wreck compared to the Sesame
| Street of the '80s and '90s. It's actually a statement about
| how far down contemporary culture has gone. Seems to be
| mostly unhinged screaming these days.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I have two 7 year olds and a 9 year old. They are taught a
| remote curriculum, supplemented by homework in the form of
| online quizzes that reward correct answer with turns at a video
| game. They LOVE doing this homework, which is every bit as
| rigorous as the homework done via paper sheets, because it
| rewards them for getting their answers right in a way that a
| number at the top of a page never would. And they get their
| homework done quicker since procrastinating just keeps them
| from playing the games.
| elliekelly wrote:
| This is interesting. I've been using the "fluent forever"
| method to learn a second language and one of the things it
| really stresses is the importance of immediate feedback. It
| makes perfect sense - it's much easier to understand your
| mistake and correct it in the moment. But I'd never thought
| about it in the context of homework. It almost seems silly
| that we expect kids to wait a full 24 hours or more to find
| out whether they've done a math problem correctly or not.
| somethoughts wrote:
| Just out of curiosity what is the online quiz app? Is it
| Prodigy (www.prodigygame.com)?
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Prodigy is one of them. My 9 year old loves it because she
| gets to use her homework answers to get her flair for her
| character in the game.
| fredguth wrote:
| As a parent of a 5-year old myself, it strikes me the lack of
| empathy in the HN community. The pandemic is a challenging
| situation for all parents as there is not enough information to
| decide on the best course of action.
|
| IMO, the OP article intention was only to share the pain, so that
| other parents know they are not alone in this challenge.
| enobrev wrote:
| A good friend of mine who works in the NYC public school system
| had, what I thought to be, an excellent idea for how we could
| handle this situation.
|
| All children of designated [minimum age / grade level] take
| classes remotely. The schools then re-open for children beneath
| that age who need the attention and dedicated professionals to
| help them learn, spread out in all the now-free classrooms that
| were taken by their upperclassmen.
| causality0 wrote:
| _hit his parents, hit his brother, broke things, and spat a cup
| of juice all over my laptop._
|
| Barring some kind of psychiatric problem like ODD, that's a
| significant failure of discipline, the responsibility for which
| lies squarely on the shoulders of the parent. I would not trust
| any kind generalized behavioral prediction from someone who can't
| keep a five year old from striking their siblings and
| intentionally destroying objects.
| baq wrote:
| you either don't have kids plural or won the lottery.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I thought I was failing as a parent because my 3 year old
| sometimes _still_ pushes my 1 year old. I feel terrible for the
| child and for the parent(s) who have created a _lot_ of work
| for themselves, the child, and maybe even society. But I also
| feel a wee bit of relief of, "okay so maybe I'm being too hard
| on myself."
| [deleted]
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| The late 3's were tough with our oldest. When our twins
| turned 6 months she totally had it out for the boy twin and
| would near constantly try to hurt him. It really didn't
| matter what we did or threatened. 5 minutes after a timeout,
| or us taking away something she wanted, she would be back at
| it again. Oh yes, she didn't like timeouts - she would kick
| and scream and cry during those timeouts. But it didn't
| matter.
|
| All we could really do was make sure they were physically
| separated as much as possible. That helped a lot. But the
| times they got close, she usually took advantage and did
| something to hurt him. E.g. if he was near her path to the
| bathroom, she would step on his hand while walking close to
| him.
|
| Ultimately, she just grew out of it around 4 years old. But
| it was a really stressful and unfun time period.
|
| She's 5 now, and the twins are 3. She loves playing with
| them. Until she doesn't of course, but even still - for the
| past 1.5 years she doesn't want to do _anything_ without
| them.
| visarga wrote:
| How would you propose to keep a 5 year old from doing anything
| except for shadowing their every move all day long? Would that
| work?
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I've literally never met a 5-year-old who doesn't do things
| like this when they're upset. Judging by what was happening on
| other families' screens when watching my son's online
| kindergarten last spring, it would seem that these kinds of
| challenges with the Zoom learning experience certainly aren't
| unique to my or my friends' families, either. This despite it
| seeming to me like a particularly happy and cohesive
| kindergarten class for the first part of the school year.
|
| My sense is that that, if you aren't _currently_ trying to
| usher a preschooler through this experience, you don 't
| actually know how your kid would have handled this situation as
| a preschooler. And if you are doing it and it is going well,
| you should count your blessings.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| > I've literally never met a 5-year-old who doesn't do things
| like this when they're upset.
|
| Really?
|
| I can't imagine either of my kids doing things like that -
| perhaps a brief outburst, sure, but it would have been
| immediately followed by an appropriate response from a
| parent.
|
| > My sense is that that, if you aren't currently trying to
| usher a preschooler through this experience, you don't
| actually know how your kid would have handled this situation
| as a preschooler.
|
| While we're not under exactly those circumstances, our
| youngest is six and we've always homeschooled. I also have a
| number of public school teachers in my family, and from my
| perspective the problem is 100% the approach. Distance
| learning can absolutely be effective, but trying to force the
| rhythm of a government school onto it is a flawed concept.
|
| On the other hand... if they restructured it so it would be
| effective from an educational standpoint, they'd have a much
| more difficult time getting those kids back into classrooms
| when the time comes. I strongly suspect that the programs
| that are in place are designed more to ease the transition
| back into the classroom than to educate.
| [deleted]
| chiyc wrote:
| "I even think Raffi might be able to improve his digital
| etiquette--to get better at waiting his turn to speak without
| slamming the computer shut because he's bored, to sit through a
| lesson without whining or screaming.
|
| But is digital etiquette something I want Raffi to learn at age
| 5? He'll have the rest of his life to figure out the niceties of
| interacting with people through a screen. I can't accept that he
| should get acclimated to this form of school."
|
| The author is almost onto something with this comment. I'm not an
| expert in this area, but virtual "education" for pre-K seems to
| miss the point of going to school for a 4 year old child. I would
| venture a guess that the impact is more about socialization and
| acclimating to the routine of school than learning things.
| wink wrote:
| This honestly has me puzzled.
|
| German here, no kids, so not 100% sure how it is today, but to
| the best of my knowledge it's still 3-5 kindergarden (no idea
| why you would do this via screen) and then school from 6-7
| (depends on birth month, etc). And the "this should be daycare"
| argument doesn't fly because how would you babysit a 5y old via
| a video conference?
|
| Maybe I'm just old, but I don't see anything wrong in not
| teaching kids a lot in a structural way before school?
| skizm wrote:
| I'm genuinely curious if we stuck VR headsets on kids, and had
| the proper software, if their would be any better results. I'm
| one of the people who think there won't be a VR/AR revolution any
| time soon, but I do think there are narrow sets of applications
| and games the benefit A LOT from it. I don't know if education is
| one of those, but I'm am very interested in finding out.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I don't think you'll get kids, particularly young kids to wear
| those for more than a few minutes at a time.
| sologoub wrote:
| Personal counter-anecdote. When I was I think about the same age
| (5-6), my mom would take me in the office and occasionally my
| only entertainment would be a DOS computer with a few basic
| games. From what I'm told, I was very motivated to get to the
| said games and quickly learned commands and my way around the
| command line - skill that turned out to be pretty useful in life.
| For "Raffi", being a true digital native and having command of
| all of these communication nuances could be quite valuable in
| life. Who knows, maybe the "drained" experience his parents have
| won't translate to him in the future because it will be second
| nature.
|
| I do fear for the skills of reading a physical book though...
| lucb1e wrote:
| > I do fear for the skills of reading a physical book though...
|
| Do you need skills for that which are different from reading a
| computer screen? I only see limitations like no ctrl+f or
| hyperlinks, so fewer skills needed rather than more.
| mmm_grayons wrote:
| While there are certainly advantages to digital reading,
| there's also something to be said for a traditional book.
| Patience and sustained attention are developed skills, and we
| have yet to learn what effects a failure to practice them at
| a young age may have on a developing brain.
| [deleted]
| lucb1e wrote:
| Ah, so it's not about reading a book versus some other
| medium, it's about patience and sustained attention because
| a book won't have notifications and pop-ups. Alright, then
| we're on the same _page_ :)
| Animats wrote:
| "Virtual pre-kintegarden?" That's childcare, not education.
| visarga wrote:
| Yes, agreed, but parents are desperate. Kids need kids to play
| with, at least they see other kids on the screen. It's a really
| unfortunate situation for the development of small children.
| rolph wrote:
| there were these PBS programs called sesame street, the electric
| company and even one actually called zoom.
|
| there was little problem with user engagement as the kiddies were
| glued to it, and assimilated/imitated the concepts quite readily
| into playtimes and IRL. perhaps there is a feature set that could
| be explored and employed in remote learning scenarios.
|
| i think that current educators could learn a lot by looking back
| at the methods of engagement.
| function_seven wrote:
| I'm amazed how dismissive all the comments are here. I read the
| article and it seems totally normal for a little kid not to be
| able to do "school" on a laptop. Kindergarten is so much
| different than later years of schooling. It's not about lectures
| and subjects, or homework and tests. It's about much more
| fundamental lessons, interspersed with creativity, socialization,
| and learning to be separated from your parents.
|
| These are fundamental qualities that require physical
| interaction!
|
| You give me the most well-behaved kid, and I'll show you a
| hellion when I attempt to sit them in front of a boring "remote
| learning" session for a few hours.
| throwawaydad101 wrote:
| Saying you can relate to what the author describes means that
| you can fill in the iceberg below the surface. I'm not sure I
| can say that for those without kids developing an appreciation
| for the magnitude of this iceberg is possible without having a
| child. I'm still learning how to dad and part of that is
| sharing the experience of the phase transition from childless
| to parent with those who have yet to or choose not to pass
| through the transition. With enough time and thought (which is
| hard to come by when you have a kid), maybe I'll get there.
| coderholic wrote:
| Me too! We're jugging 3 kids and working from home, and I
| thought the article was on point. My guess is that most of the
| dismissive comments are from people without kids!
| dpcan wrote:
| I have 4 kids. I work from home. My wife works 11 hours a day
| away from the house. I feel like this world is full of
| "can't" people who aren't willing to do the extra work. We
| seem to have enough time to comment on Hacker News. To argue
| about masks on Facebook. To watch every TikTok, and spend
| hours on Twitter.
|
| But put in the necessary work to make learning at home
| productive. Nope, can't do that.
|
| We have put in the work at our house to make e-learning
| possible, and it can be effective, and kids can focus, and
| kids can wear masks, and kids CAN still LEARN during
| difficult times - but it takes sacrifices from parents, be it
| sleep, entertainment, our phones, TV, or even time off work
| and living lean.
|
| But I'm ready for it... let's hear some CAN DO stuff from the
| HN community!
| coderholic wrote:
| I don't think the point is it can't be done. I think it's
| just acknowledging that it's HARD. Both for the kids, and
| the parents.
| dpcan wrote:
| What the hell is wrong with HARD???? Why is everyone so
| lazy? We are going backwards as a society. I was raised
| thinking that if it wasn't hard to do, it wasn't worth
| doing. Every uphill path should not be looked at as an
| arduous journey, but as an adventure with an amazing
| reward at the top.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Something being difficult and worthwhile doesn't mean
| it's the most efficient use of your time. And it doesn't
| mean we can't or shouldn't make those things easier.
| Building a computer is hard. It's also worthwhile. I've
| built a few. But I've bought a lot more. It usually isn't
| worth my time, effort, and energy.
|
| And having conversations about the difficulties is how
| people, especially people on HN, will better understand
| the problem and come up with a solution that will
| (hopefully) leave everyone better off.
| graham_paul wrote:
| > if it wasn't hard to do, it wasn't worth doing
|
| that's a very narrow minded way of looking at the world.
| Kind words, hugs are very much worth it
| dpcan wrote:
| The point is that the things that come easy for us are
| usually those that we value the least, so, after we put
| in a lot of hard work and time on something, and we had a
| great accomplishment, we'd say "if it wasn't hard to do,
| it wasn't worth doing." It's a self pat-on-the-back.
|
| But I totally understand how if you applied this saying
| to EVERYTHING then it wouldn't make sense, or be seen as
| "narrow minded" I suppose.
|
| I mean, fishing is pretty damn easy, but every trip I
| take is worth taking for the peace of mind.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Nothing is wrong with hard. But complaining about hard
| things, sympathy, and recognition of the difficulty is
| also a large portion of what makes doing hard things
| tolerable. Trying to shut it down will have the opposite
| effect of what you want.
| baq wrote:
| have you been taught to tell hard from bullshit? i've
| been taught that hard and worthwhile are orthogonal and
| the amazing prize at the top sometimes is just the fact
| that you've made it, thanks, now get the f* back down you
| idiot.
| [deleted]
| dpcan wrote:
| Yes, sometimes I cannot tell the difference between hard
| and bullshit. And yes, I can be a complete idiot
| sometimes. So, thanks?
| wvenable wrote:
| > If it wasn't hard to do, it wasn't worth doing
|
| That might be true but if something is hard that doesn't
| mean it's automatically worth doing. Video conference
| learning might be both simultaneously hard and completely
| worthless.
| dpcan wrote:
| You're right. My point is more that parents need to work
| really hard to be involved and turn that boring video
| class into something productive, interesting, and
| worthwhile.
| visarga wrote:
| This comment is lacking in empathy. Not all situations
| can be solved by the same logic.
| dpcan wrote:
| I'm sorry, and I agree, it wasn't. It was a frustrated
| post and I'm being down-voted because of it :/
| TwistedWeasel wrote:
| I'm with you, we should approach problems with optimism
| not fear. However, teaching that approach to kids is a
| long term strategy, and helping them adapt to a new
| routine is a slow process, it's less about the difficulty
| and more about the emotional cost that you have to pay to
| succeed.
|
| I have three kids, all elementary school age and I am
| prepping to start the school year all remote. I'm not
| afraid of the challenge but i'm honest with myself that
| it will take a toll on my kids and my marriage that I
| cannot avoid. No matter how hard I work, it will take
| time and getting into the routine cannot be done
| overnight.
|
| It's okay to be daunted by that prospect.
| throwaways885 wrote:
| I like your take on life - thanks for reminding me of
| this little fact.
| dpcan wrote:
| I assume this is sarcasm, but if not, prepare for down-
| votes because absolutely nobody agrees with me.
| lovich wrote:
| What exactly is your daily routine then. Raising 4 kids
| while working full time with your spouse working 11 hours
| outside of the house is a pretty large claim.
| itronitron wrote:
| Probably something like, get the kids dressed before the
| first nanny shows up at 8am...
| dpcan wrote:
| I run my own business. Been a web consultant / developer
| for over 17 years. I have a pretty steady clientele right
| now. I work 6 to 9am, then 10-11pm, and I usually get a
| hour or two in during the day. Plus I work 6am to 10am
| weekends, maybe more if my wife isn't tired and hangs out
| with the kids on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
| xnyan wrote:
| I'm very curious about your daily schedule. I was
| homeschooled for 12 years, 1 of 5 kids so I'm familiar with
| home education and having a hard time imagining how a
| single adult can both work and teach and take care 4 kids.
| dpcan wrote:
| I've run my own business for over 17 years. I get up
| early, work, stay up kind-of late, work, and get a lot of
| time in early on the weekends. It's not really that
| terrible. It's difficult, but doable, and I can still
| focus a lot of my energy on raising my kids.
| megablast wrote:
| What is your brilliant solution then???
|
| This is clearly the best we can do know.
| burkaman wrote:
| Often it's easier to find a solution by talking about a
| problem, rather than staying silent until you've solved it on
| your own.
| dpcan wrote:
| And yet, with a little time, patience, and dedication from
| parents, all children can be taught to be respectful, focus,
| and learn the way we need them to learn during a strange and
| complicated time.
|
| This world is full of can't can't can't. Everywhere we turn, if
| there's an inconvenience involved. If we have to do something
| boring. If it won't be fun. If it's hard work..... we can't do
| it. It can't be done.
|
| I wish we had a "we can do this" attitude. I wish parents could
| say, "Don't worry, let's help each other. You may not have the
| time, but I do, and I'm here to help."
|
| But I'm out of hope.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > This world is full of can't can't can't.
|
| The world is filled with plenty of that, and it always has
| been. But plenty of people are absolutely tackling this mess
| with a can-do attitude. You're just not seeing it, for
| whatever reason.
|
| > But I'm out of hope.
|
| And that may be the reason ;-).
|
| Turning off the news is the best choice I've ever made. Can't
| be too depressed when I don't get bombarded constantly with
| BS, we're too busy living our life to the best of our
| ability.
| dpcan wrote:
| Unfortunately the laziness is all around us where I live.
| We've struggled for the last 10 years to find more than 2
| or 3 other families that think the way we do.
| [deleted]
| mumblemumble wrote:
| If, by "a little time", you mean a few years, until they're
| psychologically developed enough that you can expect this of
| them.
|
| "The way we need them to learn" strikes me as a very telling
| choice of words. This is a moment where we need to be meeting
| _their_ needs, not just molding them to our expectations.
| dpcan wrote:
| My son had to miss pre-school when he was 4.
|
| I created a home-based program (week to week) where we
| learned everything I could find that would normally be in a
| regular pre-school curriculum.
|
| We worked for 3 hours every morning "studying", and he was
| 4. I made it fun. I made it productive. We took breaks. We
| had snacks. We had recess. It worked.
|
| By the end of the summer, he was reading and more prepared
| for Kindergarten than any of the kids in his class.
|
| Yes. If parents stop complaining, and get down to work, and
| make this fun for their kids, and have a positive attitude,
| even the youngest students can learn from home.
|
| Now days we even have Zoom options, so we WILL be able to
| get kids eye to eye with teachers, friends, other students.
| I would have loved that 8 years ago.
| M277 wrote:
| Slightly unrelated, very sorry, but could you direct me
| to the resources you used while teaching your son?
| danShumway wrote:
| Effectively, what you're advocating for is that parents
| should all homeschool their children.
|
| Which... I mean, that's a position some people advocate
| for. But if every parent was equipped to do that, then
| their kids wouldn't have been in public school in the
| first place.
| dpcan wrote:
| I'm saying that I'm tired of parents saying they "can't"
| do this distance learning things, or their kids "can't"
| do it, because they can, and if everyone put in some
| positive energy and effort, we can make it a success.
| james_s_tayler wrote:
| Ah, so the original comment is predicated on the
| assumption that all adults are capable of doing that for
| their kids.
|
| Some are. Some aren't.
|
| Same goes for the kids.
| dpcan wrote:
| I'm saying that all adults are capable of making distance
| learning work for their kids. They CAN do it, but it will
| be HARD.
| sarakayakomzin wrote:
| >I created a home-based program (week to week) where we
| learned everything I could find that would normally be in
| a regular pre-school curriculum.
|
| >We worked for 3 hours every morning "studying", and he
| was 4.
|
| >Yes. If parents stop complaining, and get down to work,
| and make this fun for their kids, and have a positive
| attitude, even the youngest students can learn from home.
|
| this is so out of touch with reality that it doesn't even
| begin an argument in good faith.
| cameronfraser wrote:
| What you did with your child is vastly different than
| sitting them down in front of a computer screen for
| hours. You interacted with your child and gave them a
| social experience and hands on activities. People have to
| work and can't just take off to be full time teachers for
| their children. Sure you would have loved Zoom, but I
| doubt your child would have.
| danShumway wrote:
| This is a good point. GP is arguing that their experience
| with their child was great, specifically because they
| didn't sit their child down in front of a screen and tell
| them to sit still and watch a pixelated head talk at them
| all day. And they're probably right, what they're
| describing sounds like an awesome learning environment.
|
| In a weird way, they're kind of agreeing with the article
| here -- remote learning as it's currently structured in
| the average public school does not work for every kid.
|
| The only disagreement seems to come down to whether
| someone's reaction to seeing a paragraph like this
|
| > Even our worst-case scenario is a privileged one; a
| trashed apartment and frayed nerves are nothing in
| comparison with what other parents are about to undergo.
| My husband and I can work at home, and we can afford some
| assistance with child care. The huge number of parents
| who must work outside the home, parents who can't afford
| any child care, and parents who don't feel comfortable
| managing a sitter's viral risk alongside their own are in
| a far worse situation.
|
| is:
|
| - Wow, this is a problem we should collectively work to
| address.
|
| or,
|
| - Wow, parents sure are lazy with their kids.
| dang wrote:
| "I'm amazed how dismissive all the comments are here"
|
| The contrarian dynamic strikes again:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22contrarian%20dynamic%22%20o...
| debacle wrote:
| dang I didn't find your link super helpful. What is the
| contrarian dynamic?
| detaro wrote:
| " _Threads often get an initial wave of negative comments,
| followed by a second wave of objections to the objections.
| What determines the initial wave of comments is not
| community opinion--rather, it 's what's the easiest thing
| to make reflexive objections to. Those comments are the
| first to show up because those reflexive reactions take the
| least time. Thoughtful comments require reflection, which
| is much slower_" ?
| debacle wrote:
| Thank you.
| dang wrote:
| The "contrarian dynamic" is that HN threads (and internet
| comments generally) are mostly propelled by people making
| objections. Cunningham's Law touches on this [1].
|
| The interesting thing is that the objections come in waves.
| In the earliest stage of a thread, they tend to be rapid
| negative reactions to the article. It's not that these are
| a community consensus, it's that they're the fastest
| reactions to feel and the fastest comments to write--
| especially when the topic is provocative, when most of us
| are reacting from cache [2].
|
| Then a second wave of objections is generated by the first
| wave. Readers come to the thread, see the comment section
| dominated by those initial 'triggered' responses, and feel
| some version of surprised-shocked-dismayed at how the
| commenters all seem to be reacting in that way. This
| propels them to write defenses of the article, often
| carefully expressing more moderate or balanced views than
| the first wave--but they probably wouldn't have been
| motivated to post anything if they didn't have the first
| wave of comments to object to!
|
| The second-wave comments tend to get more upvotes, perhaps
| because more people tend to share the more moderate view,
| but also because those comments tend to be more reflective
| [2] and therefore better written.
|
| This explains the irony of why the most-upvoted comment in
| a thread so often begins with "Wow, I can't believe the
| comments here"--or from the current thread: "All of these
| comments make me think HN has never interacted with a 5
| year old" [3]--followed by a defense of whatever those
| objections were objecting to. Eventually you get objections
| to the objections to the objections--which reminds me of
| the line "My complication had a little complication" from
| _Brazil_ [4], and also epicycles.
|
| [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
|
| [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=reflective%20reflex%20by:
| dang&...
|
| [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24215135
|
| [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyHilwSRo28#t=61
| freewilly1040 wrote:
| A lot of these bad ideas aren't even in comments any
| more, I've been seeing them more and more in hyper short
| blog posts, eg:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24109726
|
| I guess it's an easy way to get high up on HN.
| chinigo wrote:
| "An argument is a connected series of statements intended to
| establish a proposition."
|
| "No it isn't."
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| But what about children in Australia, where remote teaching has
| been done for many years? Are they all somehow specially gifted
| children, so that they manage?
| sailfast wrote:
| Can you say more about the format of remote learning in
| Australia? Age ranges? How much video per day? In my school
| district, they are looking at 4 hours (2, 2-hour blocks) of
| "live learning" in-person per day, for 5-6 year olds. I can't
| imagine they're doing that in Oz?
| function_seven wrote:
| I don't know all that much about how it's done there, so I
| can't really answer that.
|
| I'm assuming you're talking about kids in the Outback, where
| vast distance makes it harder to have classroom instruction?
|
| There was a recent NYT article about that[0], and my takeaway
| is that it's really homeschooling with support from teachers.
| Not a Zoom videoconference where they fake like they're in
| the same classroom. The parents are much more involved in the
| early years. Once the kids are old enough to know how to
| learn, then it can become more of an instruction/homework
| style of teaching rather than what's required for preschool
| and Kindergarten kids.
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/world/australia/austra
| lia...
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I got similarly dismissive comments once when I pointed to the
| importance of PE for child development, not just physically but
| also social dynamics and team aspects, confidence building and
| so on.
|
| HN crowd is a tough audience when it comes to adolescent
| socialisation, not everyone benefits from sitting in front of a
| computer from a young age.
| supergeek133 wrote:
| I understand dealing with children, I'm not being dismissive
| (at least I don't think I am) of that.
|
| I'm confused why this was written or published. There is no
| "point".
|
| Yes, it's very hard to keep adults much less kids cooped up in
| a house all day. Especially for 6+ months. But, what else are
| we supposed to do?
|
| This is just a paid, public gripe that a lot of people can
| relate with, but what purpose does it serve? There isn't an
| alternative unless the author is pushing for schools to open
| regardless of COVID, which I doubt.
| coderholic wrote:
| > This is just a paid, public gripe that a lot of people can
| relate with
|
| It is
|
| > but what purpose does it serve?
|
| It lets the millions of other parents who find themselves
| suddenly in the same situation, feeling the same things, know
| they're not alone, and that the struggle is real!
| rrobukef wrote:
| It is the beginning of remote-learning science. Anecdotes
| allow estimations of impact and the creation of hypotheses.
| If nobody talks about a problem, does it exist?
| supergeek133 wrote:
| That's fair enough, but that's not a fair indictment on
| virtual education (per the headline). The premise stinks.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Don't see how being "forced to sit in front of a screen" is any
| different from being forced to sit in a classroom.
|
| Honestly think if a single good thing comes out of all of this it
| will be the rethinking of schooling.
|
| If I have kids no way will I risk their raw potential at the
| hands of what is currently considered a teacher.
| bluntfang wrote:
| >Don't see how being "forced to sit in front of a screen" is
| any different from being forced to sit in a classroom.
|
| Really? I mean, I'm not for public schools, but this is a
| little obtuse don't you think?
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| Here's a crazy idea. Maybe 5 years old is too young for formal
| education to begin with.
| rspoerri wrote:
| Funny, the kid is behaving like the parent. Where could that come
| from?
| learc83 wrote:
| Most studies show that unless kids come from low income families
| the differences between kids who go to pre-k and kids who don't
| are gone by 3rd grade or so. And for low-income kids it's only
| advantageous if it's "high quality" preschool.
|
| I can't for the life of me figure out why you would bother
| putting your kid through 6 hours a day of virtual pre-k, when you
| have to be right there to watch them anyway.
| actfrench wrote:
| It's slightly amusing to me that people are upset kids are
| "forced to sit still" in zoom as if the didn't have just as much
| trouble being "forced to sit still" in traditional classroom
| environments. The big difference is that parents weren't around
| to see how much suffering this very unnatural forcing of kids to
| sit still was causing them. A lot of schools have 30 minutes of
| recess if they're lucky. All kids, especially kinesthetic
| learners need to be able to move to learn. It's part of the
| process.
| Miraste wrote:
| While I agree with your broader point, kinesthetic learning
| isn't real [0], and modeling education on the idea of learning
| styles can be harmful [1].
|
| [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/the-
| myth...
|
| [1] https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2019/05/learning-
| sty...
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| It's very clear that you have some weird grudge and have never
| actually set foot in an elementary school classroom, where kids
| are very frequently moving around and active. Talk to literally
| any elementary school teacher.
| rubber_duck wrote:
| I stopped reading since it's obviously just a rant but this seems
| like it's about preschool remote kindergarten - clickbaty title
| dang wrote:
| We'll swap it out for the subtitle, which is a lot more
| specific.
| irrational wrote:
| I honestly couldn't get past the first four paragraphs. The
| author has... issues. Personally I wouldn't write an article like
| this to let the whole world in on my neuroticism.
|
| It reminds me of the Mark Twain quote "It's better to keep your
| mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt."
|
| It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear neurotic than open
| it and remove all doubt.
| vixen99 wrote:
| Better to keep your fingers off the keyboard than fail to offer
| a single point of contention while rather unpleasantly abusing
| the author. I wonder why you even felt the need to comment. Are
| perceived neurotics open season?
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| double0jimb0 wrote:
| While I 100% agree with the intent of the HN guideline, there
| are times when calling out crazy as crazy is fully warranted.
| I believe this is one of those cases.
|
| I don't believe parent comment was a "shallow dismissal", it
| was an accurate and "deep" dismissal.
| dang wrote:
| "I honestly couldn't get past the" is an internet trope.
| "The author has issues" is true of everybody. "Neurotic" is
| calling names in this context [1]. It seems like a shallow
| dismissal to me. There's another guideline which applies
| here too:
|
| " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation
| of what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith._"
|
| Posts about parenting may be the most emotionally
| triggering of all categories that come up on HN. As
| readers, we're all responsible for containing the reflexive
| reactions that come up in us when encountering something
| intense, and instead of rushing to the comments to dismiss
| or attack it, waiting awhile until something more
| reflective emerges, in which case an interesting comment
| may result.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?query=reflective%20reflex%20by:dang
| &...
|
| [1] So is "crazy" for that matter. That's an extreme thing
| to say, and I'm sure you don't really mean it.
| danShumway wrote:
| Purely from my own perspective, if this is deep then I'd
| like to see a 'deeper' dismissal in that case. I read the
| first 4 paragraphs, and I didn't see anything that
| warranted the word 'crazy'.
|
| Developmental problems? Maybe, although I'd honestly like
| to see some stronger evidence from people claiming that.
| Non-typical learning styles? Maybe? But we're talking about
| a 5 year old, temper tantrums are completely normal.
|
| A lot of commenters here arguing fiercely that there's
| something deeply wrong with a toddler who's used to being
| in a physical space with physical people within a
| specialized environment, having a different reaction to
| being sat in front of a static screen for an extended
| period of time in a home setting.
|
| A lot of commenters dismissing the idea that virtual
| meetings might be more draining or difficult for some
| people, which seems very... I'm surprised to see that
| attitude on HN of all places, we should know better than
| anyone that different people deal with isolation and
| physical proximity in different ways.
|
| If the original poster can point to specific language that
| makes them think something is wrong with the parent or
| child, then they should point to that language. I think
| it's inappropriate and shallow to throw around labels like
| 'crazy' just because a child is misbehaving.
| supergeek133 wrote:
| Yeah, I read it and ended being not sure what it was about.
|
| Unless you're going to end with a stance of "but we'll get
| through it because of COIVD" or "we should go back to school no
| matter what" I'm a little lost of the point here.
|
| Nobody is "doing this" to you, it's what we all have to do.
| mc32 wrote:
| If remote learning is leaving a lot to be desired where kids
| aren't really getting much benefit academically and it's
| stressing people out, is there a possibility to pause education
| for a year and resume a year from now?
|
| Now, I know there is no guarantee there will be an effective
| vaccine, but if not we may learn enough whether heard immunity is
| enough by then.
|
| Graduating a year later for everyone from K- to-be-seniors in Uni
| may or may not be much of a big deal. Lots of people take a year
| off before uni...
| supercanuck wrote:
| Sure, but don't expect other people to follow suit. They will
| hire private teachers and remote home school to get ahead.
| supergeek133 wrote:
| That's been the case with or without school.
| mc32 wrote:
| I guess that may happen for kids who go to private school
| (public in U.K.) but for kids in public schools, skipping a
| grade when the schools know their status before the pause
| might be harder to do. Additionally it'd likely be a minority
| of students--most would take the opp to remain refreshed and
| current rather than learning new subject matter.
| fossuser wrote:
| Get ahead of what?
|
| I'm not convinced any of this remote learning stuff matters
| that much as long as parents have money to feed their kids
| and house themselves.
|
| Canceling remote learning to spend time with the kids and
| giving them space to let them learn about something they're
| interested in for a year probably does zero harm and might
| even be beneficial. I would have loved it.
|
| Obviously bad family situations, and poverty are not helped
| by this - but those things are probably made worse by
| throwing remote learning on top of it.
|
| Wealthy countries should have a vaccine and distribution done
| by end of 2021. Waiting that out is what I would do if I had
| kids.
| mjayhn wrote:
| I failed 7th grade because my parents were divorcing in the
| middle of it and literally everybody including my family
| acted like it was the end of my school career and I'd never
| recover and get a real job and would be SOO behind my
| peers.
|
| I'm 100% on the "yeah you can take a year off, it'll be ok
| or better in the end" side of things. I can't imagine
| myself at 13 having to deal with that + quarantine/2020.
| danShumway wrote:
| I'm not an expert on education, I'm not going to
| speculate on the psychological effects of having a year
| without school on a kid. I don't think I'm qualified to
| do that.
|
| Outside of developmental effects though, by the time you
| get to college does it really matter if someone is one
| year older than another person? Is anyone going to get
| rejected from a first job interview just because they're
| 26 instead of 25?
|
| Plenty of people take gap years before they go to
| college, so my concern with taking a year off school
| wouldn't be, "but how will they ever catch up?" It would
| be about the resources that parents are relying on, the
| developmental effects of having a routine interrupted to
| that degree, the ability of parents to keep working,
| early socialization, etc...
|
| I think those are all valid concerns, and (again) I'm not
| going to pretend that I can speak on them. But I'm not
| worried about, "some other kid will be one year ahead."
| [deleted]
| treis wrote:
| You can't push pause on human development, though. Having
| your first job interview at 26 instead of 25 doesn't
| matter. Missing out on a year of socialization when
| you're 6 almost certainly does.
| fossuser wrote:
| You're still taking in input and experiencing the world.
|
| I was really young for the grade I was in which made
| things harder than necessary. It would have been easier
| to be a year older.
|
| You'd still get the socialization anyway, you'd just have
| one year with a little less (and I'm not really convinced
| that remote socialization via remote learning is
| particularly helpful, whatever alternative socialization
| outside of remote learning is probably just as good or
| better).
| [deleted]
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah - I'd argue that social response and the
| psychological toll from it does ten times more damage
| than the actual "failure" of seventh grade.
|
| People can spend decades afraid to learn because some
| shitty teacher made them feel dumb when they were young.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Get ahead on placement exams. Schools have only so many
| teachers for Algebra. Also not all kids are doing remote
| education.
| balfirevic wrote:
| How does that work? The idea is to just resume schooling
| where you left off a year prior. In what way can anyone
| get ahead? Kids who didn't pause would simply be in a
| higher grade, others in a lower grade, but so what?
| romwell wrote:
| "Get ahead" in what sense?
|
| Yay, now some 7-year-olds will be just as educated as some
| other 8-year-olds, and will be able to skip a grade when
| school resumes. So.. what?
|
| Also, why don't we imagine something better than just keeping
| kids at home all day.
|
| Having a year devoted to outdoor activities instead of formal
| education would be wonderful for everyone, including the
| teachers (who can still have work), parents (who can get some
| time away from the kids), and, most importantly, the kids
| (who are effectively under house arrest until they turn 12).
| jeffbee wrote:
| You can pause education but a child is a learning machine and
| they aren't going to stop learning just because you stop
| teaching them. They'll just learn in unstructured ways without
| direction.
| t0mbstone wrote:
| Is that really such a bad thing?
|
| I mean, that's pretty much the entire point of Montessori
| school and various "lifestyle of learning" types of
| educational programs
|
| I think huge swathes of the information that we force feed
| our children in school is mostly forgotten or un-used.
|
| I was homeschooled as a kid, and my parents let me basically
| stop school at the age of 11. I was interested in computers,
| and by the age of 13 I had a job as a programmer, and by the
| age of 16 I was employed full time. I ended up going back and
| studying for my GED (passed it with a 98%) when I was 17
| (because my parents said I couldn't get a car until I passed
| the GED at least).
|
| One of my other siblings didn't even learn to read
| competently until the age of 10. He now has a college degree,
| owns a huge house, and makes six figures.
|
| Kids are a lot more resilient than people give them credit
| for, and the most sure-fire way to make kids hate learning is
| to force them to do it.
| mc32 wrote:
| I meant a pause in institutionalized learning--of course I
| expect them to learn other things around the home.
| latortuga wrote:
| You are likely to get loads of people who are unhappy to be
| paying property tax for something that isn't happening.
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