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To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

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Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#101

Post by gpvos »

Hello71 wrote: post #61
legionof7 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm in high school right now and they have this system. They also had the same in middle school. There's no way this instant feedback system is mentally healthy. Also, a lot of times, teachers push a 0 as a placeholder grade and parents aren't in the classroom, so they see that and flip out. Also, with the notification system, both parents and students see each assignment grade in a bubble, so it affects them a…

wouldn't it make more sense to use 1 as a placeholder

Where I live, 1 looks more like an actual grade (the lowest one) than a 0, so that would be a very bad idea.

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#102

Post by trevyn »

ddebernardy wrote: post #100
trevyn wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be even more shocked if you leave first-world countries. Human brutality runs deep, and you can still find it displayed openly on the majority of Earth’s land mass.

A number of developing countries ban all forms of corporal punishments on children. Swaths of Latin America does so, as do a few African and Asian countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_corporal_punishment_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_corporal_punishment

All developing countries have ineffective enforcement of laws, as well — that’s one of the defining criteria.

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#103

Post by nearbuy »

notus wrote: post #21
xupybd wrote: post #9

>“It’s sad, but the good news is there's a simple intervention — don't give report cards on Friday.” Yeah that avoids the one instance of child abuse but that's not the big picture here. How is it that there are that many people that struggle to cope that this is common enough to show up in this research. I feel for both the parents and the children here. If something like grades are causing the parents to lash out a…

I feel like we are kind of doing a disservice to children by even having grades K-8. I don't really see what the value is in having them. Parents over focus on it and seem to measure their own child's worth based on grades and children also seem to measure their own self worth based on grades. IMO there is no case where a child that young should be failing anything, if they are failing a class that young there is som…

1. Grades are a strong motivator for many students.

2. Grades help you gauge how well you did, which can be useful for self-improvement.

3. Grades in early years can help train you to gain the study habits to get good grades in later years. Suddenly being expected to study in grade 9 might be harder.

In my university we were allowed to take some classes pass/fail instead of graded. I can tell you exactly how much effort students would put into those classes: enough to pass. Even the way students would take about these classes would emphasize this. We'd say things like, "yeah, I have 4 courses this semester, and econ, but it's pass/fail".

Yes, I often hated the stress of homework and grades in school. But the unfortunate truth is if nothing were at stake (i.e. bad grades), I would have much rather spent my energy playing video games than learning. Which is exactly what I did when I didn't have homework or a test (and often even when I did).

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#104

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

seltzered_ wrote: post #2

Somewhat related, there was another article this week that mentioned kids (and parents) now get notifications sent over the phone of their grades: https://www.vox.com/first-person/2019/1/10/18174263/anxiety-... “As the retreat group started to tell me more about why they felt such a collective sense of stress and pressure, a few major themes emerged. All of them said they voluntarily get their grades pushed to their…

we also have a web portal where they notify us of pending homework (well, in reality its the teachers who are not always filling out the reports). When I saw that my reaction was: thanks goodness they didn't have these in my time...

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#105

Post by hvindin »

I do wonder if there is any chance that the reason that there is a spike in reports of abuse on the Saturday following report cards coming out on a Friday is because it is more likely to be reported?

It's not mentioned anywhere in the article, but if someone said to me that 2 things are true: 1. There is some correlation between report cards being returned and child abuse 2. There is a spike in reports of abuse on Saturdays when report cards are returned on Friday

I wouldn't immediately think "cool, lets return report cards earlier. Problem solved"

Other than not really solving the problem of abusive parents, this also doesn't actually rule out child abuse happening accross the board but not being reported on weekdays.

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#107

Post by barry-cotter »

ngcc_hk wrote: post #58
geofft wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If something like grades are causing the parents to lash out at the kids it's a sign that the parents are struggling to cope. I think that's starting from a mistaken premise. Why expect parents to cope? Parenting takes an amount of empathy and patience and care that many people simply do not have and will not have. In pre-modern society the nuclear family made sense, but at what point do we say, being someone's bio…

The nuclear family is born in industrial modern society. In city in fact. Remember the one to be jailed - it takes a village. No. Not sure in western society but in the old village (even to this day all those chinese has a village in their passport marked), you have a place where the punishment to be held. Come on. Treating kid well is a modern concept. Whilst I think parent could be and should be lovely. It is not s…

> The nuclear family is born in industrial modern society. In city in fact. Remember the one to be jailed - it takes a village.

This isn't true. The nuclear family was well established in Western Europe by the 1500s and it was known though uncommon in Eastern Europe. The clan or extended family is clearly older and more common in human history but the nuclear family was not born in cities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_marriage_patt...

> The Western European marriage pattern is a family and demographic pattern that is marked by comparatively late marriage (in the middle twenties), especially for women, with a generally small age difference between the spouses, a significant proportion of women who remain unmarried, and the establishment of a neolocal household after the couple has married. In 1965, John Hajnal discovered that Europe is divided into two areas characterized by a different patterns of nuptiality. To the west of the line, marriage rates and thus fertility were comparatively low and a significant minority of women married late or remained single and most families were nuclear; to the east of the line and in the Mediterranean and particular regions of Northwestern Europe, early marriage and extended family homes were the norm and high fertility was countered by high mortality.

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#108

Post by jakobegger »

trevyn wrote: post #77
ddebernardy wrote: post #75

> 19 states still allow schools to hit students As one living in a country that bans parents from hitting their own children, I find that number shocking. Do they actually hit the kids in practice, or is this some left-over regulation from the past (like the French ban on women wearing trousers in Paris that got formally repelled a few years ago)?

You might be even more shocked if you leave first-world countries. Human brutality runs deep, and you can still find it displayed openly on the majority of Earth’s land mass.

The US is the only country that has not signed the UN convention on childrens rights.

Even developing countries ban corporeal punishment.

The US is the outlier.

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#109

Post by jakobegger »

dorkwood wrote: post #106

One possible cause I haven’t seen mentioned is that abusive parents are perhaps more likely to get drunk on a Friday, and the report card provides them a timely justification to beat their kids.

Yes. I don't think bad grades make parents violent. Alcohol does.

Re: To protect kids, don’t send report cards home on Fridays

#110

Post by dataduck »

geofft wrote: post #47
derp_dee_derp wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious answer: love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself. This will solve the problem on every level.

I agree with that being the first and greatest commandment, but it's for individuals. What do we do as a society when other people do not keep that commandment—or more relevantly, the second, to love their neighbor as themselves? Where is the line where we intervene for the sake of others?

Perhaps these problems can't be solved by society? The amount of misalignment of (putative) intent and effect in education I've seen, especially at the policy level, at least suggests this. If that's true, the question you should be asking is what should I do when other people do not keep that commandment.
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