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The 'Over-Parenting Crisis' in School and at Home (2015)

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Re: The 'Over-Parenting Crisis' in School and at Home (2015)

#101

Post by dragonwriter »

ameister14 wrote: post #97
btilly wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me turn this around. As a parent, I think that teachers should pay attention to research on homework that says there is on average no academic benefit, but there is a huge cost in family conflict. You have enough time in the classroom to teach and provide practice time. Free family time up for what parents see best.

There's actually another way entirely to do it - have the time in class for working and have the time after for actively learning. So the students read and learn new concepts at home and practice them in group settings at school. Unfortunately, that depends on the home environment being conducive to learning.

> Unfortunately, that depends on the home environment being conducive to learning.

So, in practice, does success in traditional school environments, even if the structure makes people think it should insulate from that concern.

The problem with admitting that the home environment is the biggest key to academic success is that it means policy actually needs to focus on improving that environment which lots of people (for different reasons) have ideological objections to. So we pretend that school is isolated from home and that if we can just configure school right, we can get results while ignoring the home environment. And we blame any failures on doing the wrong things to the school environment, not the fact that we are focussing on the wrong environment.

Re: The 'Over-Parenting Crisis' in School and at Home (2015)

#102

Post by nybble41 »

tehabe wrote: post #62
Steltek wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In Germany a court just ruled that a three year old can go alone to the bath room and their parents don't have to check on them. The child set the bath room under water and someone wanted the parents to be liable. Seems like the alternative is to declare the 3yo liable for the damage, which is absurd. Water like that can cause a lot of damage; it's not like they tipped over a glass on the table.

They wanted the parents to be liable for the damage, claiming they have breached their obligatory supervision to the child. The judge said that the parents are not obligated to surveillance their child 24/7 in the flat as it would hinder the development of the child.

I would argue that parents (or legal guardians) should be held liable for damage caused by their minor children, period, without claiming that parents have an obligation to monitor their children 24/7. The degree of surveillance is up to the parents, and I agree that continuous monitoring would tend to stifle development, but that does not remove the parents' liability. Someone has to pay for the damages, and it would not be sensible or just for that someone to be the owner of the damaged property.

The alternative to parental responsibility is that property owners simply ban unsupervised minors from the premises. They represent too great a risk to be tolerated in the absence of legal recourse for whatever damage they might cause.

Re: The 'Over-Parenting Crisis' in School and at Home (2015)

#103

Post by dragonwriter »

nybble41 wrote: post #102
tehabe wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They wanted the parents to be liable for the damage, claiming they have breached their obligatory supervision to the child. The judge said that the parents are not obligated to surveillance their child 24/7 in the flat as it would hinder the development of the child.

I would argue that parents (or legal guardians) should be held liable for damage caused by their minor children, period, without claiming that parents have an obligation to monitor their children 24/7. The degree of surveillance is up to the parents, and I agree that continuous monitoring would tend to stifle development, but that does not remove the parents' liability. Someone has to pay for the damages, and it woul…

> I would argue that parents (or legal guardians) should be held liable for damage caused by their minor children, period, without claiming that parents have an obligation to monitor their children 24/7.

The idea that having children should be treated as a strict liability tort is...unusual.

Without that treatment, the damages would need to stem from some other tort by the parent (such as negligence by failure to reasonably supervise), or a tort by the child with a rule that parents are liable for the children's torts.

> Someone has to pay for the damages, and it would not be sensible or just for that someone to be the owner of the damaged property.

That's who usually pays for damages not resulting from some failure of a legal duty, so I do think see why a child being involved would change that.

> The alternative to parental responsibility is that property owners simply ban unsupervised minors from the premises.

Well, that's an alternative, and a fairly common one where it's not fundamentally incompatible with the purpose of the property.

Re: The 'Over-Parenting Crisis' in School and at Home (2015)

#104

Post by seanmcdirmid »

georgeecollins wrote: post #90
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a semi-academic, practice supervision sounds like a horrible use of limited teacher/classroom time. But I guess that is true at the high end (in universities and higher performing kids) but not at the lower end where professional practice supervision is much more necessary.

My child goes to a very good school and they often teach math "upside down". In this method, the homework is to watch the teacher give a recorded lecture. Then, in class they work on the homework (math problems) while the teacher goes around watching them work and helping them with the parts they don't understand. He loves that method and seems to lean a lot from it.

Flipped classrooms are increasingly common in universities as well, but the 4 hours of outside work for every hour of class still applies.

Re: The 'Over-Parenting Crisis' in School and at Home (2015)

#105

Post by jaiprabhu »

tehabe wrote: post #4

Recently I watched a report by the US correspondent of the German public television. She spoke with parents who got into trouble because they let their children play near the house. A mom who put surveillance software on their children's phone. Parents who look on video feeds from the day care centres. I found this shocking and also dangerous in the long run, people are getting used to surveillance might also accept…

I can attest to parents looking at video feeds being very very common, at least in silicon valley (San Francisco bay area). Its not only day care centers but also parents installing cameras in their home to monitor their child who might be with a nanny. A lot of this is understandable for a parent of a very young kid going to perhaps an unknown day care. Of course there are a lot of ways you can go overboard - and people often do - but the base concern I feel is quite valid.

Re: The 'Over-Parenting Crisis' in School and at Home (2015)

#106

Post by [deleted] »

citizenkeen wrote: post #41
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which leads to the question of how one teaches general parenting skill.

My wife is a pediatric occupational therapist. My dad's always saying "There's no book on parenting." My response if always "Screw you, yes there is. But you went to business school." You can pay someone to fix your injuries, or broken pipes, but you can't pay someone to raise your kids. When my son was born, I went into it with the knowledge of three highly rated books on Amazon I had picked at random. My wife went…

[deleted]

Re: The 'Over-Parenting Crisis' in School and at Home (2015)

#107

Post by rayiner »

laurieg wrote: post #58

As someone considering starting a family, I have literally no idea what parenting is anymore. When I was younger I was pretty much left to my own devices, sent off to play with my brother and then packed off to school when old enough. My parents were too busy working, cooking and cleaning to do much fancy extra curricular stuff. I do wonder now what I should be doing to prepare for parenthood. I feel that perhaps it'…

I'm working on kid #2, and my takeaway is this: "parenting science" is like "nutritional science." It's almost entirely bullshit, and little to no progress has been made in the field ever. There is no use paying attention to it, other than doing/not doing the obvious things. (Don't eat too many calories; don't emotionally destroy your kids.)

Your kids will turn out how they are going to turn out. Instinctively, you'll love them and want to keep them alive, so don't worry about that. Other than that, do what you think is right and hope for the best.

Re: The 'Over-Parenting Crisis' in School and at Home (2015)

#108

Post by bunderbunder »

ginko wrote: post #61
bunderbunder wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With how US geography is, it would be impossible in most communities to build schools such that kids can easily go there by themselves. Even in cities of >250,000 people, it's common for there to be no sidewalks, and possibly not even any proper crosswalks, such that it's very difficult to get around without driving a car. In denser cities, though, you do tend to see neighborhood schools instead of larger, more centr…

> Even in cities of >250,000 people, it's common for there to be no sidewalks, and possibly not even any proper crosswalks This seems like a failure at city planning. Anyways shouldn't there be a school bus?

I grew up outside one of these towns. There was a school bus. As a consequence of the communities being so spread out, the route was very long. As I recall, I would have to catch the bus nearly an hour before school started.

Other kids got dropped off and picked up by one of their parents, and, in retrospect, I imagine it was a convenience decision for everyone involved. For one, it probably meant everyone got to sleep half an hour or so later.

This has probably only become worse since then, since the trend seems to be toward people wanting ever larger houses with ever larger yards, thereby making everything even more spread out.

Come to think of it, it's no wonder kids have apparently started opting for staying at home and playing games online with their friends rather than getting together in meatspace. It's probably getting to be just too inconvenient to get together in meatspace.

Re: The 'Over-Parenting Crisis' in School and at Home (2015)

#110

Post by bunderbunder »

rayiner wrote: post #107
laurieg wrote: post #58

As someone considering starting a family, I have literally no idea what parenting is anymore. When I was younger I was pretty much left to my own devices, sent off to play with my brother and then packed off to school when old enough. My parents were too busy working, cooking and cleaning to do much fancy extra curricular stuff. I do wonder now what I should be doing to prepare for parenthood. I feel that perhaps it'…

I'm working on kid #2, and my takeaway is this: "parenting science" is like "nutritional science." It's almost entirely bullshit, and little to no progress has been made in the field ever. There is no use paying attention to it, other than doing/not doing the obvious things. (Don't eat too many calories; don't emotionally destroy your kids.) Your kids will turn out how they are going to turn out. Instinctively, you'l…

> "parenting science" is like "nutritional science." It's almost entirely bullshit, and little to no progress has been made in the field ever.

Your analogy is a good one, but it goes a layer deeper than I think you realize.

"Parenting science" is like "nutritional science" in that, based on what you can get out of the popular sources, it is almost entirely bullshit. It's also similar in that the science has continued to make progress, but you never really hear of it because very little of what's being discovered is the kind of thing that will sell books or attract advertisers.

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