Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation • Hacker News Board

Re: Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation

#161

Post by Mikeb85 » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 6:32 PM UTC

This is the result of the society the US built.

To get a 'good' job, you need to have attended the 'right' school. To get 'good' investors as an entrepreneur, you need to know the 'right' people (which is also influenced strongly by where you went to school).

To get into the 'right' school, you need to optimize for that result. If you're working full-time and trying to pay your own way, good luck. Kids that have 'helicopter' parents who have the means to support them and encourage (or force) them are already a leg up on the poorer competition.

All of these factors of course just serve to entrench the upper classes, and reduce social mobility (which, while it exists, it's very difficult to move up). Poorer students have much less time and money to do the 'right' things, and while there are always outliers, they don't determine the direction of society.

We could always build a more egalitarian society (basic income, free health care and post-secondary education), but equality doesn't always appeal to our perception of 'fairness'. And the benefits of equality (a happier, less stressful society) aren't something that we can necessarily quantify, especially when it's 'our' taxes that pay for it.

Anyhow, my point is, this trend will continue, because it's nothing more than a reaction to institutions already in place.

Re: Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation

#162

Post by School-Cotton » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 6:34 PM UTC

fsloth wrote: post #151

m_fayer wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a parent then, your decision looks like: Let your kid be a kid and bank on society having advanced far enough to allow success without a big-brand school on your CV. Barring that, hope your kid will be driven/creative/wily enough to make do without that stamp of approval. Or, take the "safe" route and go full helicopter-parent, and give your children the best possible guarantee of success in the world as it…

I'm left wondering why the parent would be compulsed to push the child agressively. Maybe it's a US thing? We are are engineer parents in northern Europe, we try to raise our kids so they remain curious and emotinally fullfilled, we wish every good thing for them - but it's really hard to imagine to go all helicopter on them. If anything, I imagine we will let them make all the right and wrong decisions about their e…

Elite schools in the U.S. are more competitive along arbitrary criteria than in Europe. To get into top schools in Europe, it's enough to do better on exams than everyone else. But since the U.S. public education system is so easy and perfect grades don't provide much of a signal, top schools are looking for proof that you're an "interesting person" in a lot of ways that seem a priori to be unrelated to academia.

Re: Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation

#163

Post by fsloth » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 6:35 PM UTC

scarmig wrote: post #36

meow_mix wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So now getting into a top college is more important than being a functional person? Failing when your an adult is more than getting a bruised knee: It's getting stuck in a job you hate, ending up in a bad marriage and becoming sick/obese because you don't know how to take care of yourself. All of those things happen because people don't know what works for them . The reason they don't know that is because other peopl…

It's not evident that so called "helicopter parenting" and getting into a top college causes any of the above. First and last are anti-correlated with it, and I wouldn't be surprised if the second is too. Obviously some people overdo it, but superior life outcomes and being a functional adult seem to go with heavily involved parenting.

Involved parenting is not about controlling ones child (well, not directly, most of the time), nor protecting them from lifes bad outcomes.

Re: Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation

#164

Post by fsloth » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 6:37 PM UTC

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #75

jon_dahl wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a false dichotomy: Stanford or life as a service worker. Both Google and YC have stopped focusing on college prestige in their hiring/acceptance, because it wasn't a particularly strong indicator of success. I would much rather send healthy kids to a state school or liberal arts college than unhealthy kids to Stanford.

Better to be a Harvard dropout (Zuckerberg) than have a CS degree from Humboldt State.

I think Zuckerbergs upbringing has more to do with him as a person rather than the university from which he did not graduate.

Re: Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation

#165

Post by crpatino » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 6:44 PM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #23

ThomPete wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting your kids into Stanford has nothing to do with helicopter parenting and I think you are missing the bigger point. The failing that you do when you are 6 is very different from the one you do when you are 16 or 26, they all accumulate and you can't redo your childhood. The things you learn when you are 6 and 16 are closer to the competition you are in when you are out of Stanford. Getting in to stanford is not…

So, what happens to those kids after Stanford, e.g., the ones who get CS degrees but were helicopter-parented? How do they compare to the kids who were equally interested in computers but "allowed to fail," e.g., did not have sparkling resumes and were rejected by Stanford?

In my experience, going to a prestigious university gives you a head start. In 10 years, it will matter most what you have done after you graduate than where you graduated from.

Of course, you still have a network of connections... but again in my experience those do not translate well if you want to do top of the line work. If you eventually want to get an MBA and boss nerds around, ivy league is the way to go... but if you are committed to be a lifelong technologist, is matter little if at all.

Re: Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation

#166

Post by zkhalique » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 6:55 PM UTC

Thriptic wrote: post #124

zkhalique wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, following sentiments of Peter Thiel and others, it's not necessary to get into an elite school today, in order to succeed. If it was, then good education and success would still be scarce in today's world, as most people can't afford to go to Harvard, Stanford, etc. Now we have MOOCs an schools can become centers for socializing, tutoring and testing. A great teacher can educate more than 300 people a year t…

It's never been necessary to go to an elite school to be successful; it's simply much easier to get your foot in the door with employers if you have the words "MIT" or "Stanford" on your resume as opposed to "Coursera" or some random college. Moreover, employers COME TO YOU if you are at these institutions, you don't need to go out and beg for face time.

Depends on the major. I would say in many majors it's work experience that matters. I agree that the first job is easier to get when you're from Stanford, but that's it.

Re: Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation

#167

Post by bwilliams18 » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 6:58 PM UTC

zkhalique wrote: post #116

klunger wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. It is like that old adage, "Behind every great man, there is a great woman." For the modern era, it should perhaps now be, "behind every top-tier university student, there is a helicopter parent". It takes so much to get into one of these schools now that it seems impossible for any child without extensive support.

Perhaps, following sentiments of Peter Thiel and others, it's not necessary to get into an elite school today, in order to succeed. If it was, then good education and success would still be scarce in today's world, as most people can't afford to go to Harvard, Stanford, etc. Now we have MOOCs an schools can become centers for socializing, tutoring and testing. A great teacher can educate more than 300 people a year t…

If you want a good education then an elite school isn't necessary. If you want access to people and an unparalleled network, then your best option is an elite school.

Re: Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation

#168

Post by bwilliams18 » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 6:59 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #162

fsloth wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm left wondering why the parent would be compulsed to push the child agressively. Maybe it's a US thing? We are are engineer parents in northern Europe, we try to raise our kids so they remain curious and emotinally fullfilled, we wish every good thing for them - but it's really hard to imagine to go all helicopter on them. If anything, I imagine we will let them make all the right and wrong decisions about their e…

Elite schools in the U.S. are more competitive along arbitrary criteria than in Europe. To get into top schools in Europe, it's enough to do better on exams than everyone else. But since the U.S. public education system is so easy and perfect grades don't provide much of a signal, top schools are looking for proof that you're an "interesting person" in a lot of ways that seem a priori to be unrelated to academia.

So encourage your kids to be interesting people, don't create an artifical construction of interestingness.

Re: Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation

#169

Post by morgante » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 7:16 PM UTC

wfo wrote: post #157

morgante wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree that helicopter parenting is anywhere near a prerequisite. In fact, amongst my peers it seems to have been the reverse. The kids with over-involved parents were the ones who ended up seeming too "cookie-cutter" and ended up going to "second-tier" universities. The hypothesis of helicopter parenting being a prerequisite for elite admissions also seems to be undermined by the consistent success of boardin…

That actually supports my argument: boarding schools are just helicopter parenting by proxy and even more extreme. Parents send their children away to professional helicopter parents to socialize only with the other helicopter parented-children.

I don't think you have a good idea of what most boarding schools are like.

At least in my experience, we were afforded an enormous amount of freedom. Certainly there are not enough staff to provide each student with anything like the amount of helicoptering that many students receive at home. It's much more like college than normal high school, with nobody checking monitoring your every moment.

Remember, helicopter parenting and privilege are not the same thing (though they are related). You can have very wealthy and disengaged parents and you can have overly involved poor parents.

How do you think it would even be possible for staff to constantly helicopter children at the level that parents typically do?

Re: Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation

#170

Post by m_fayer » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 7:17 PM UTC

bwilliams18 wrote: post #168

School-Cotton wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elite schools in the U.S. are more competitive along arbitrary criteria than in Europe. To get into top schools in Europe, it's enough to do better on exams than everyone else. But since the U.S. public education system is so easy and perfect grades don't provide much of a signal, top schools are looking for proof that you're an "interesting person" in a lot of ways that seem a priori to be unrelated to academia.

So encourage your kids to be interesting people, don't create an artifical construction of interestingness.

Genuinely interesting people are unlikely to tick all the (arbitrary) boxes expected by the universities. They might even have an unapologetic C in a class or two.